CHICAGO–A typical client for Nicholas Bartzen, an associate with Levenfeld Pearlstein's Community Association Group, would be a condominium representative whose building has anywhere from four to 500 units and whose board has a question that needs to be responded to quickly. The answer can most likely be found within the condo's governing documents but as Bartzen tells GlobeSt.com, “the way these documents have been written is anything but uniform.”

To find the clauses that he needs within these documents, Bartzen turns to an application called Diligen, which uses machine learning — a type of artificial intelligence that self-corrects and learns as it receives more information — to scan the governing document. To be sure there are other applications on the market that offer similar AI-driven scanning services; Bartzen likes Diligen because he says it is aimed at his niche practice of law. Other applications that he vetted, he says, “didn't have the algorithms that I need for my clients.”

AI Makes Its Way Into Real Estate Tech

It has become a cliche to say that real estate has been slow to adopt technology. In the last few years, though, the industry has made strides in many areas — apps now proliferate in such areas as tenant-landlord communications or asset management.

Now there are signs that AI is starting to infiltrate bits and pieces of the commercial real estate tech as well. Steve Weikal, head of Industry Relations at MIT Center for Real Estate, which maintains a database of about 2,000 proptech startups on the market today, says he is seeing AI used in locational decision-making, in valuations and appraisals, in serving, in evaluating the risks of a particular loan — and as Diligen and other apps illustrate, the scanning of leases and other legal documents.