Every AI Website Looks the Same. Here's How to Spot One.

Website

Sep 22

You've seen this website. You've probably seen it forty times this month.

There's a tiny all-caps label floating above the headline. The headline has one word in italic serif, maybe underlined with a hand-drawn swoosh. Below that, two buttons: a filled one that says "Get started" and an outlined one that says "Learn more." Somewhere behind it all, a soft purple gradient blob is doing its best.

Scroll down and you already know what's coming. A row of grayscale logos under "Trusted by." Three cards with thin line icons. A stats bar announcing "10k+ happy customers." A section numbered 01, 02, 03.

It's clean. It's modern. It's completely forgettable. And more and more, it's made by AI.

The greatest hits of AI slop

If you want to play along at home, here are the patterns showing up over and over again in AI-generated sites.

Eyebrow text. That small uppercase label above a heading ("OUR SERVICES," "WHY CHOOSE US," "FEATURES"). Used sparingly, it's a nice typographic tool. AI puts it above every single section, which means it stops meaning anything.

The one italic word. "Design that actually works." "Build something beautiful." A single word swapped into a serif italic to feel editorial. Once is a choice. On every site on the internet, it's a tic.

Fake handwriting. Scribbled arrows pointing at buttons, circled words, a little "psst!" in a marker font. It's meant to feel human and spontaneous. When every AI site has the same spontaneous scribble, it feels like neither.

Gradient blobs and grain. Soft blurred color orbs floating behind the hero, often with a noise texture on top. Usually purple, blue, or peach.

Bento grids. Content chopped into a tidy mosaic of rounded rectangles in different sizes, regardless of whether the content has any reason to be arranged that way.

The three-card row. Three features, three icons, three short sentences. Always three.

Pill buttons and glassy cards. Fully rounded buttons, frosted translucent panels, a thin border glowing faintly.

Stats that say nothing. "500+ projects. 98% satisfaction. 24/7 support." Big numbers, no context.

The copy. "Elevate your brand." "Unlock your potential." "Seamless, scalable, stunning." Words that could describe a bakery, a SaaS tool, or a law firm equally well.

None of these elements are bad on their own. Designers invented most of them for good reasons. The problem is that they now show up together, in the same order, on sites for businesses that have nothing in common.

Why this keeps happening

AI tools learn from what already exists on the web. They're very good at producing the average of everything they've seen. So when you ask for "a modern website for my business," you get the statistical middle of every modern website: the most common layout, the most common fonts, the most common phrases.

On top of that, most people prompt these tools the same way. Similar prompts, similar training data, similar output. It's less a design process and more a very sophisticated autocomplete.

The result is a web where a yoga studio, a fintech startup, and a wedding photographer all have the same homepage with a different logo in the corner.

Why it matters for your brand

A website's job isn't just to look nice. It's to make someone feel like they've found you specifically, and not the other nine tabs they have open.

When your site uses the same visual language as everyone else, visitors can't tell you apart. They skim, they don't remember, and they don't come back. Worse, people are starting to recognize the look. The eyebrow text and gradient blob are becoming a signal that says "this was made in an afternoon," and that's not the first impression most businesses want.

Sameness is expensive. You just pay for it later, in attention you never got.

So is AI the problem?

Honestly, no. We use AI in our own workflow at Gulabi Mango, and it's genuinely useful for speeding up the parts of the process that don't need a human's taste.

The problem is AI without a point of view. A tool can generate a layout. It can't decide what your brand should feel like, what makes you different from your competitors, or which conventions are worth breaking. That part still takes a person who knows your business and has an opinion.

How to avoid the slop look

A few things we come back to with every project:

Start with the brand, not the layout. Before anything gets designed, figure out what you stand for, who you're talking to, and how you want to sound. Design should come out of those answers, not a template.

Question every default. If there's eyebrow text, ask why it's there. If there's a three-card grid, ask whether the content actually has three parts. If you can't justify an element, cut it.

Write like a person. Replace "elevate your experience" with something only you could say. Specific beats polished every time.

Pick things that are yours. A color palette, a type pairing, a photography style, a quirk. Small, consistent choices are what make a brand recognizable from across the room.

Use AI as an assistant, not an art director. Let it help with drafts, variations, and busywork. Keep the creative decisions with someone who cares how it turns out.