Artificial intelligence may be one of the most talked-about developments in business today, but for Samantha McLean, the real value of AI lies not in what it replaces but in what it can restore.
Speaking at the PM/One conference in Sydney, the co-founder of Elite Agent and AI Powered Agents, addressed an audience of property management professionals with a message that was both optimistic and pragmatic.
AI, she said, is already reshaping how people find information, make decisions and interact with services, but using it well requires more than downloading an app or writing a clever prompt.
“The technology is here,” Samantha said. “But it’s not a magic fix. You can’t just throw AI at a bad process and expect it to improve. If the process is flawed, you’re just speeding up the mistakes.”
She pointed to recent examples outside the industry to make her case.
In the United States, fast food giant McDonald’s trialled an AI-powered voice ordering system at drive-throughs.
Customers were supposed to speak their order and have it processed automatically.
But videos quickly circulated online showing customers receiving bizarre combinations like bacon added to an ice cream or 200 chicken nuggets being placed in a single order.
Eventually, McDonald’s pulled the plug on the system.
The lesson, Samantha said, isn’t that AI can’t be used in customer service; it’s that automation without proper planning or human oversight can go badly wrong.
“AI should be your co-pilot, not your autopilot,” she told the crowd.
“You still need a person at the wheel who understands what’s going on and can step in when something doesn’t look right.”
In the property sector, where time pressures are constant and client relationships are central, Samantha sees AI as a way to give professionals space to focus on what really matters.
She shared the example of a Western Australian real estate agent who had been using AI to handle repetitive tasks like drafting emails or processing data, which freed up enough time for her to personally deliver settlement gifts and reconnect with clients in their new homes.
“That’s time she’d stopped spending years ago,” Samantha said. “But AI gave it back to her.”
Rather than fearing AI will take over jobs, Samantha also urged property managers to think about how it can enhance the service they already provide.
She described how her own team at Elite Agent uses AI not just for one-off tasks, but as part of their daily workflow.
Article drafts are automatically generated from online forms, research can be summarised quickly, and branded content is produced within minutes, not hours.
The key, she said, is understanding the difference between using AI occasionally and integrating it into how a business operates.
Most people, she noted, are still in the early stages of using AI, relying on it to tidy up an email or suggest alternative phrasing.
“That’s fine as a start,” she said. “But it’s not transformational.”
To help professionals use AI more effectively, Samantha offered a simple formula.
Describe the task clearly, assign the AI a role, give it context, explain the goal and specify the tone or style.
In practice, this might mean prompting an AI tool with: “You are a property manager with 15 years’ experience.
Write a polite but firm reminder to a tenant who is three days late on rent. They’ve been a good tenant. The tone should be empathetic and professional.”
“That’s very different to just saying, ‘Make this sound better,’” she said. “You wouldn’t hand that kind of vague brief to a team member, so why would you do it with a tool?”
Samantha also encouraged real estate professionals to rethink their core processes entirely.
Instead of a traditional move-in pack, for instance, a tenant might receive a digital welcome message, a personalised video and access to an online guide tailored to the property, including how the air conditioner works, when the bins go out and where to find good local coffee.
With AI, she said, much of this information can be created once, then reused or adapted with very little time or cost.
“It’s not just about efficiency,” she said. “It’s about doing things you didn’t have time to do before.”
While she acknowledged that AI comes with risks, particularly around data privacy and content accuracy, Samantha said the real danger was in waiting too long to engage with it.
She cited research from MIT suggesting that up to 95 per cent of AI pilot programs fail to deliver results, often because businesses either don’t give the technology enough structure or abandon it before it has time to work.
“The tools are there,” she said. “The limit isn’t the technology anymore. It’s the way we think about it.”
Samantha ended her presentation with a metaphor.
In 1954, British athlete Roger Bannister became the first person to run a mile in under four minutes, something many experts at the time believed was physically impossible.
Once he did it, others quickly followed.
“Sometimes, we just need to see something done before we believe we can do it ourselves,” she said.
“So what’s your four-minute mile? Is it personalising communication? Improving tenant experience? Standing out from your competitors? AI can help you do it, but you have to be willing to try.”
