California's law on digitally altered listing images

What AB 723 does

Assembly Bill 723 (Pellerin) was chaptered on 10 October 2025 and adds section 10140.8 to the Business and Professions Code — the part of California law that governs licensed brokers and salespersons. It has applied since 1 January 2026, which the Department of Real Estate confirms in its own advisory on AI in California real estate.

The section applies when a licensee, or a person acting on their behalf, uses a digitally altered image in an advertisement for the sale of real property. It does not create a prohibition on altering images. It creates two things the advertisement must carry, and the second one is unusual.

Read the bill yourself before you rely on any summary of it, including this one. It is short, it is in plain English, and the primary source is linked below.

• AB 723 (2025–26) at leginfo.legislature.ca.gov ↗
• California DRE advisory on AI in real estate (March 2026) ↗

Requirement one: a conspicuous statement that also points to the original

The advertisement must include a statement that the image has been digitally altered. It must be reasonably conspicuous and placed on or adjacent to the image. And — this is the half most summaries drop — the statement must itself indicate that the unaltered images can be accessed through the link, URL or QR code the advertisement includes.

"On or adjacent to" is stricter than what a lot of listings do today. A single line at the bottom of a long remarks field is neither on the image nor adjacent to it in any practical reading, and it does not survive the photo being syndicated to a portal, screenshotted, or printed on a flyer.

Be careful with what a generic staging badge does here. A marker reading "Virtually staged" composited into the picture is a statement that the image was altered, in a placement that travels — but on its own it says nothing about where the original can be accessed, which the statutory statement has to do. Ours is no exception: it is a starting point for the first requirement, not a discharge of it, and the sentence that carries the access language is one you have to compose with the link you are actually publishing.

Requirement two: the unaltered original has to be reachable

The advertisement must include a link, URL or QR code to a publicly accessible website carrying the original, unaltered image, clearly identified as the original. Where the advertisement is posted on a site the licensee controls, the statute contemplates the unaltered version being in the posting itself — but it expressly allows compliance through a public link that clearly identifies the unaltered image, so "the original must be embedded in the listing" is not the whole rule.

Either way this changes workflow rather than captioning. The original photograph is no longer just something you kept on a drive — it is something the advertisement has to point at, which requires that it exists, that it is identifiable as the original, and that somebody can actually open it.

Here is exactly what QuickStaging does and does not give you. It retains your unaltered original alongside every render, serves both halves of the pair in the gallery, offers the original as its own download, and ships it inside every ZIP under a "-before" filename. It does not publish a per-listing public page of unaltered originals with a stable URL or QR code, and it does not generate the statement wording that points at one. Producing that link and that sentence is the agent's or the brokerage's job today. We would rather say so plainly than let a compliance page imply a feature that is not there.

If you are looking for a tool that hands you a finished California-compliant advertisement, this is not it, and you should be sceptical of one that says it is — compliance is a property of your advertisement, including its placement and duration, not of an image file.

• How the gallery serves the original →

What counts as "digitally altered"

The statute is specific rather than gestural, which is what makes it useful. Digitally altered expressly covers adding, removing or changing elements of the image — fixtures, furniture, appliances, flooring, walls, paint colour, landscaping and views among them.

It expressly excludes ordinary photographic processing: lighting, sharpening, white balance, colour correction, angle, straightening, cropping and exposure. So the routine edits a listing photographer applies to every frame are outside it, and nobody has to badge a photo for having been levelled.

Note where furniture sits in that list. Adding furniture is squarely inside the definition, which settles a question a lot of staging vendors have been answering optimistically. Scope it precisely: a virtually staged photograph is a digitally altered image for the purposes of this section when it is used in an advertisement for the sale of real property by, or on behalf of, a covered licensee. That is the case this section is about, and it is the case most listing photography falls into.

Why the definition is a useful test, and where it stops

The same list that captures furniture also captures walls, flooring, paint colour and views. A tool that will happily repaint a wall or refinish a floor is producing images whose alterations run well past the furniture, and every one of those alterations is inside the statutory definition too — with a showing to contradict them.

QuickStaging's rendering instruction permits free-standing furniture and decor and nothing else, output comes back at the original's aspect ratio up to 2048px on the long edge, and the original is retained beside every render precisely so the difference can be demonstrated rather than asserted. That is the product's founding constraint rather than a compliance feature bolted on for one state.

The honest limit: none of that is a guarantee about any individual render. There is no automated check inspecting every image, generative models can drift inside a frame the pipeline is holding steady, and your comparison of the pair before publication is what actually catches a render that changed the house. The statute makes that review more consequential, not less necessary.

• The furniture-versus-alteration line in full →

Questions about AB 723

When did AB 723 take effect?

1 January 2026. The bill was chaptered on 10 October 2025 and the Department of Real Estate's March 2026 advisory on AI in real estate confirms it applies from the start of that year.

Does AB 723 ban virtual staging in California?

No. It does not prohibit altering images. It requires that an advertisement using a digitally altered image carries a conspicuous statement that the image was altered, placed on or adjacent to the image, and that the statement indicates the unaltered original can be reached through a link, URL or QR code the advertisement includes.

Is a virtually staged photo a "digitally altered image" under the section?

Adding furniture is inside the statutory definition, alongside changing fixtures, appliances, flooring, walls, paint colour, landscaping and views. So for a covered sale advertisement, treat every virtually staged photo as an altered image rather than looking for a furniture exception.

Do my normal photo edits count?

The section expressly excludes lighting, sharpening, white balance, colour correction, angle, straightening, cropping and exposure. The ordinary processing a listing photographer applies is outside the definition.

What is the penalty for getting it wrong?

We are not going to give you a number, and you should be suspicious of pages that do — several of them cite a specific dollar figure that does not appear in the bill. This is a provision of the Real Estate Law affecting licensees, so the consequences run through that framework. Ask your broker or your attorney rather than a vendor's website.

Does it apply to rentals?

Not on its own terms. Section 10140.8 as added by AB 723 is framed around advertising for the sale of real property, so a rental advertisement is outside it. That is a statement about this section and nothing wider: rental advertising is reached by other law, legislation in this area is being introduced faster than any page can track, and a tenancy listing is not a place to assume you are unregulated. Check the current position for rentals in your state rather than reading the sale answer across.

Does QuickStaging make me compliant?

No, and it does not supply a California-ready publication package. It gives you a badged image, a clean image, your unaltered original as a download and inside every ZIP, and a plain-text disclosure line. It does not publish the public original-image URL or QR code the second requirement contemplates, and its badge does not carry the original-access language the statutory statement needs. Producing the link and the sentence that points at it is on you and your broker. Compliance is a property of your advertisement, not of a tool.