Anyone else weirded out by AI doing roofing estimates and stuff?

I tried one of those tools last spring when I was budgeting for my garage roof. It asked for my address, wether the roof was flat or pitched, and my email. That was it. It told me somethig in the low thousands, wich sounded amazing untill I got three real bids. Every actual roofer who came out pointed out the same thing the tool never asked about: the deck had some soft spots near the scuttle hole and the old layer needed to come off before they'd warranty anything. The real number ended up roughly double what the website promised.

Here's the thing though. I don't fully blame the tool, becuase I knew going in it was a guess. The problem is I can see how someone with no framing of reference takes that number to the bank or uses it to grill a legit contractor who quoted higher. Then the honest guy loses the job because a robot invented a fantasy price.

What I landed on is that these sites are fine for one purpose, figuring out if a project is even in the conversation for you this year. Anything past that, you need someone on the roof counting squares and poking at the edges. My guy spent forty minutes up there and caught things no zip code average whould ever know about, like how the previous owner had shingled over a valley wrong.

I'm probaly in the minority on this one, but one of those estimator tools saved me real money last year. Put a metal roof on my workshop, 24 by 30, and before calling anybody I ran the address through a free calculator. It came back with a number close to what I'd guessed myself, so I kept it as a baseline. First contractor out quoted way over that, and when I asked him to break the figure down, most of the gap was him pricing a full strip and replace when the boards underneath were solid. He walked it with me and cut a chunk out. The second bid came down too once he knew I allready had a detailed number in hand. The estimate never replaced somebody climbing up there, it just gave me a floor to judge padding against. The poster above got a bad number using the tool as an answer. I got a useful one treating it as a question. A satellite photo can't see rot, sure, but neither coud the prices my dad pulled out of the yellow pages in the 90s and people still got roofs. If a real bid blows way past the range, that's a conversation with the roofer about why, not proof the software is junk. Mine caught two contractors padding the job before anybody signed anything, so I'm not ready to bury the idea.

Gonna push back on the idea that a tool number works as a baseline, even for a simple square building. Mine matched the first contractor's quote too, and I figured that meant the tool was solid. Then a hail claim came thru and the adjuster's scope came in way under what the site said a full replacement shold run. Turns out the calculator was just spitting back regional averages dressed up to look precise. If your one contractor happens to price near the average, congrats, you got lucky, not validated. Two data points that agree can still both be wrong, and these tools only ever have one data point, wich is zip code math wearing a costume.

Been roofing and building since the late 70s and back then the quote WAS the inspection. Guy pulls up, drags a ladder off the truck, walks the whole roof, counts squares with a tape and a notepad, checks the flashing by hand. Took an afternoon sometimes, and nobody minded beacuse that's how you knew the number was real. My worry is the young crews starting to treat the app figure as their target instead of the roof itself. alredy had a fella knock on my door last fall quoting off a satellite image without ever setting foot on the ladder. Told him thanks but no thanks. Wonder if that's where this all heads.