Does it matter if a site looks AI-made?

It depends what you are selling. For an internal tool, not at all. To convince someone to pay you, yes: the first impression settles things before a word is read.

Do visitors really notice?

They do not identify it, they feel it. Nobody thinks "that is an AI"; people think "that looks like a template", or move on without knowing why.

Does it come from the tool or from the request?

From the request, almost always. A vague instruction produces an average answer, because the average is what is most probable. A precise instruction changes the result completely.

Do I have to rebuild everything to fix it?

No. Two or three arbitrary decisions — a typeface, a colour, a layout that is not centred — are often enough to escape the catalogue effect.

The signs that give away a site built by an AI

Your site is finished, it is tidy, and it still rings false. Something about it feels generic and you cannot say what. People around you call it "nice" without conviction. You are afraid a client will see it and know in three seconds that nobody really made it.

A site built by an AI is recognisable by its regularity: every section has the same shape, the same gradients, the same turns of phrase. That is not a lapse in taste, it is the average of millions of examples. A visitor does not analyse it, they feel it in three seconds.

Why all these sites look alike

There is a simple explanation, and it has nothing to do with laziness.

An AI produces what is most probable given your request. Ask for “a nice homepage for my business” and it produces the average of everything that has ever been called a nice homepage — that is, what everyone has seen for the past five years.

That is not bad taste. It is an average. And an average, by construction, surprises nobody.

So the problem is not the tool: it is the precision of the request. A vague instruction invites an average answer, exactly as a vague instruction costs six round trips instead of one.

The seven markers, from most visible to most subtle

1. Everything is centred. Centred heading, centred subheading, three centred columns, next section centred. A site where every block is perfectly symmetrical top to bottom feels like a slide deck rather than a page.

2. The purple-to-blue gradient. It has been the default background of so many generations that it now works as a signature. Same goes for the dark background with a coloured glow behind the heading.

3. The three cards with an icon. Three aligned blocks, a small icon on top, a three-word title, two lines of text. It is the most-produced structure in the world. Its presence is not a fault; its presence three times on the same page is.

4. Headings that say nothing. “A solution designed for you”, “Excellence at the service of your project”. Those sentences could sit on any site in any trade. It is the most telling marker, because it shows the page has nothing specific to say.

5. Uniform rhythm. Every section the same height, every paragraph the same length, every heading the same weight. Text written by a human breathes irregularly: one very short sentence, then a longer development. A generated page marches to a metronome.

6. Round, unverifiable numbers. “Over 500 satisfied clients”, “10 years of expertise” on a site created last month. Those figures come from the same mechanism that makes an AI invent with total confidence: they are plausible, so out they come.

7. Images showing nobody. Empty offices, anonymous handshakes, abstract gradients. A site selling one person’s work that never shows that person throws away its only advantage over everyone else.

What it actually costs

The stake is worth stating honestly, and it is not aesthetic.

A visitor never thinks “this site was made by an AI”. They think “meh”, or they think nothing at all and close the tab. The decision takes a few seconds, before any reading, on an impression.

And that impression decides what follows: do I trust this person, do I write to them, do I give them my money. A site that looks like a thousand others gets judged like a thousand others — which is to say, not judged at all.

That is also why the subject does not concern everyone equally. For an internal tool, a dashboard, a private area: irrelevant, only usefulness counts. To convince someone to pay you: it is the first argument, and it acts before all the others.

What is enough to escape it

The good news is that it takes very little, because the problem is not quality but the absence of choices.

Decide two or three things arbitrarily. A typeface you do not see everywhere. A colour that is not default blue. A layout that is not centred. Those decisions need no justification: they only need to be yours, and therefore improbable.

Put in something nobody else could. A real photo, a real first name, a sentence you genuinely say to your clients, a detail of your trade only someone in it would know. It is the only content an average cannot produce.

Break the regularity at least once. A section shorter than the others, a block that spills over, a sentence alone on its line. Irregularity is what separates a written page from a produced one.

Refuse once. When the first proposal arrives, ask for something else without explaining why. The second proposal already steps outside the average, simply because the most probable one was set aside.

The test to run on your own site

Open your homepage, read the main heading, and ask yourself one question: could this heading sit on a competitor’s site?

If yes, you do not have a design problem. You have a content problem, and no visual tweak will fix it.

If no — if that heading could only belong to you — the rest is an evening’s work.