Three-year Delta Media AI survey analysis finds concern about AI guardrails has barely changed, while women and men focus on markedly different risks
3-Year Lookback: Delta AI “Worry Score” 2024-2026
Michael Minard of Delta Media Group
CANTON, Ohio, Aug. 26, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Three years into real estate’s rapid embrace of artificial intelligence, brokerage leaders remain nearly as worried about AI risk and liability as they were when Delta Media Group began tracking the emergence of real estate’s use of AI in 2024.
The average Delta AI “worry score” among brokerage leaders asked whether AI lacks appropriate guardrails to limit risk or liability was 6.38 out of 10 in 2026, compared with 6.50 in 2024. Concern dipped to 5.80 in 2025 before rebounding this year, according to a new analysis of three years of respondent-level data from the Delta Media Real Estate AI Survey.
At the same time, the 2026 findings reveal that AI worry is not the same for everyone. Women real estate leaders are significantly more focused on regulatory compliance and data privacy than men, while male leaders are nearly twice as likely as women to identify uncertainty about AI costs and return on investment as a concern.
“One reason AI worry may be rebounding is that the decisions are getting bigger,” said Michael Minard, CEO and owner of Delta Media Group. “Brokerages are moving beyond simple AI tools toward agentic AI, automation and systems that can take action. As AI becomes more powerful and more autonomous, choosing the right AI partner becomes a risk-management decision, not just a technology decision.”
Minard added, “Whether a brokerage decides to build, buy or rent its AI capabilities, leaders need to know who is handling their data, how the technology is being managed and what protections are in place. The cheapest or fastest option may not be the safest one.”
AI worry has barely budged in three years
Despite growing familiarity with AI, brokerage leaders’ concerns about its potential risks remain remarkably persistent.
- The average AI risk and liability worry score was 6.50 out of 10 in 2024, falling to 5.80 in 2025, before climbing back to 6.38 in 2026.
- The share of brokerage leaders giving AI risk a high worry score of 8, 9 or 10 was 42.4% in 2024, 33.7% in 2025 and 37.9% in 2026.
- The 2026 average is now within just 0.12 points of where it stood when Delta Media first measured AI risk concerns three years ago.
The rebound comes as artificial intelligence itself is changing. The 2026 survey is the first in the three-year series to ask brokerage leaders about agentic AI tools that can automate tasks, reflecting how quickly AI has moved beyond generating content into systems capable of taking actions on a user’s behalf.
The survey does not establish that agentic AI caused the increase in worry. However, its emergence adds a new dimension to questions about guardrails, compliance, data security, liability and who ultimately is responsible when AI takes action.
Women and men see different AI risks
The differences become especially pronounced when the 2026 results are examined by gender.
Among female brokerage leaders:
- 71.4% named compliance with real estate regulations as an AI concern, compared with 39.1% of men.
- 65.7% identified data privacy and security risks, compared with 48.4% of men.
- Just 28.6% cited cost and ROI uncertainty, versus 51.6% of men.
The findings point to an important distinction: women are not expressing greater concern about AI across the board. Instead, their concerns are much more heavily weighted toward regulatory and data risks, while men show substantially greater concern about AI’s financial return.
“What stands out is that women leaders aren’t simply more worried about AI,” Minard explained. “Their risk radar is pointed in a different direction. They’re much more focused on compliance and protecting data, while men are considerably more focused on cost and ROI. That distinction matters because AI risk is not one thing, and the safeguards a brokerage needs depend on where its greatest exposure lies.”
Brokerage size changes the AI risk equation
The 2026 findings also show that concerns vary sharply based on brokerage size.
Among firms with 101 or more agents, the leading concerns included:
- Data privacy and security risks: 61.2%
- Integration with existing systems: 56.7%
- Cost and ROI uncertainty: 52.2%
- Training agents and staff: 50.7%
- Regulatory compliance: 44.8%
The picture is very different among firms with 20 or fewer agents:
- Regulatory compliance: 75.0%
- Training agents and staff: 50.0%
- Data privacy and security risks: 43.8%
- Cost and ROI uncertainty: 25.0%
- Integration with existing systems: 25.0%
Larger brokerages appear to be wrestling more heavily with the economics, technology infrastructure and data risks involved in deploying AI at scale. Smaller brokerages are far more focused on staying compliant.
For smaller firms, that concern may be especially important because they typically have fewer internal resources to devote to evaluating AI systems, compliance and security. For larger organizations, the challenge grows with the number of agents, systems, integrations and data sources AI may touch.
That makes selecting an AI provider increasingly consequential regardless of brokerage size.
“AI vendors are not interchangeable,” Minard said. “Brokerages need to look beyond features and ask harder questions about security, privacy, compliance, integration and ongoing governance. As AI becomes embedded in more workflows, selecting the right technology partner may become one of the most important risk-management decisions a brokerage makes.”
About this analysis
This analysis draws on individual respondent-level data from all three years of the Delta Media Real Estate AI & Leadership Survey, with more than 100 brokerage leader responses each year from 2024 through 2026. The 2026 gender analysis includes 64 male and 35 female respondents. Brokerage-size comparisons include 16 respondents from firms with 20 or fewer agents and 67 respondents from firms with 101 or more agents.
About Delta Media Group
Delta Media Group, Inc. is America’s largest family-owned real estate technology provider for brokerages. Located in Canton, Ohio, it is the inventor of DeltaNET, known as the industry’s most advanced CRM-based, all-in-one digital marketing platform. One of the largest real estate technology solutions firms in the US, Delta Media is the trusted technology partner for more than 80 LeadingRE Affiliates and over 50 top-ranked brokerages nationwide. Discover more at deltamediagroup.com.
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