Commercial real estate heavyweight JLL is diving into the AI craze with the release of its own proprietary generative AI model called JLL GPT, which it says is a first for the CRE industry.
While JLL (NYSE: JLL) is based in Chicago, the AI model was developed by its San Francisco-based tech research arm, JLL Technologies, which was created in 2019.
"I think it's going to be a game changer," said Yao Morin, the company's chief technology officer.
Like the popular ChatGPT, JLL’s own AI-powered chatbot will be able to answer questions and generate text about topics pertaining to commercial real estate, trained exclusively with the firm’s mountains of data. It will ideally allow its employees to quickly obtain market information and data that previously required hours of research and outreach.
"Before JLL GPT, you probably need to do a lot of internet searches, you have to go ask a few people and probably ask in-house analysts to help you," Morin said. "But now you can just ask JLL GPT and have an actual natural language conversation to get the information."
Morin said JLL’s more than 100,000 employees will have access to the chatbot and AI model at first, but down the road the company may open it up to clients.
The company has issued a set of AI usage guidelines to combat the threat of hallucinations or occasionally erroneous responses delivered by the AI. It also is encouraging employees to double check and revise AI answers before making important business decisions.
Morin herself is fairly new to the CTO role, having been promoted in May from her position of chief data officer. The CTO role did not even exist before Morin was tapped, and its creation could be indicative of JLL’s forward-looking push into the tech and AI space.
JLL is joining a myriad of multinational corporations getting into generative AI, a technology prognosticated to drastically change the way white collar workers work and potentially replace many existing jobs. For instance, Salesforce recently launched a suite of “GPT” products to bolster its existing CRM and Slack products.
“We have a very long roadmap and a lot of more ideas coming in this space,” Morin said. “Responses from employees have been fantastic and I think it's a matter of prioritizing on what services we can provide for our clients and our employees, and then using the expertise to guide us to continue to build and evolve.”
