Compass pulled out all the stops when it rolled out its new AI assistant to its 83,000 real estate agents, deploying senior leadership in an all-out campaign to drive adoption across the brokerage.

The company staged a demo day to launch the tool, known as AI Assistant, drawing a live audience of more than 10,000 Compass agents. Chief Executive Robert Reffkin, President of Growth Rory Golod, Chief Technology Officer Shay Artzi, and President Neda Navab were among the executives who presented the product, joined by agents who had used it during the pilot and feedback phases.

Since the launch, senior leaders have toured the company's local offices to promote AI Assistant. Corporate staff based in those regional offices have also been trained to teach agents how to use the tool, which is designed to handle repetitive administrative tasks and nudge agents toward new sales opportunities.

"It takes a lot of work to get agents to actually adopt these tools," Golod said.

Early usage figures suggest the effort is gaining traction. Compass reports that within weeks of AI Assistant's July debut, roughly 15,000 agents had generated more than 97,000 conversations with the tool.

Those figures show early reach but do not by themselves indicate how often the assistant's recommendations become sustained workflows or client activity. For Compass, the next practical test is whether its training and office-level support can turn initial conversations into regular use of the tool's action-oriented features.

An industry ready — and somewhat reluctant

Compass's push comes as AI use spreads across real estate. Nine out of every 10 agents industrywide say they use AI today or are planning to, according to the National Association of Realtors (NAR), and more than two-thirds report saving at least one hour of work each week with the technology.

Adoption is not without friction. The median age of a real estate agent is 57, according to the NAR, and older Americans use AI chatbots less for work than younger employees, per Pew Research.

The brokerage industry also carries a mixed track record with new technology, and tech-focused firms like Compass must confront a residue of historical skepticism. Brokerages were slow to embrace the internet and mobile applications, leaving a large market opening for online real estate marketplaces such as Zillow and Redfin to respond to homebuyers who moved to digital channels faster than agents did.

A do-it-yourself threat, plus rising regulation

A deeper risk looms as well: the democratization, through AI systems themselves, of the services agents provide. There are early indications that some home buyers and sellers are experimenting with chatbots for do-it-yourself transactions to save on fees.

One physical therapist assistant reported saving thousands of dollars by using an AI platform for a home contract. A man in Florida says he used ChatGPT to close the sale of his home in five days, for $100,000 more than real estate agents estimated the property would fetch. Earlier this year, a technology reporter at the New York Times documented using AI almost entirely to sell a home in upstate New York.

Emerging regulation adds another wrinkle. In New York City, a proposal would require landlords, brokers, and online listing platforms to disclose when they have used AI to generate or digitally alter rental listing photos or videos.

Golod contends that AI and technology cannot replace the experience of an agent going into a seller's living room, seeing the property firsthand, having a face-to-face conversation, and outlining a plan to sell it at the highest price possible with the least amount of hassle.

"To actually sell a home properly and help a buyer buy a home properly, it requires incredible judgment, high EQ, and relationships," Golod said. "Those are just not things that AI has the capability of driving right now, and maybe not for a very, very long time, if ever."

From content creation to agentic AI

Compass's internally built AI platform has evolved as AI models have advanced. An earlier version of the tool, called Compass AI, mostly focused on content creation, including generating marketing materials and social media posts.

AI Assistant, by contrast, was conceptualized to act more like an actual human assistant and take real actions. It can proactively produce a list of prospective clients who may be ready to sell a home and draft a personalized note to reach out and reconnect. The tool is also voice-enabled, allowing agents to dictate notes while driving between appointments. In addition, the AI can compile a list of potential homes for a buyer, called Compass Collections, and share that data with agents and their customers.

"We moved in a similar path to the industry, moving from chat to agentic," Artzi said. "We saw the value is really in agentic, and so it took us a while, because you want the AI to be aware of all the platforms of tools."

AI Assistant connects 100 different real estate tools within a single platform. Compass says it was designed so that agents need only know how to prompt the AI to take an action, rather than understand any Compass-specific branding or software jargon.

"We're starting to see this amazing shift where more and more agents, who in the past used parts of the platform but not all of it, are now really starting to take full advantage," Golod said. "It's going to drive a lot more usage."

Reporting by John Kell. This story was originally featured on Fortune.com.