AI copy has a certain flavour we can all detect. Sickly sweet; a little bit…weird.
Rewind a couple years, and the em dash was talk of the town. An AI marketing scandal the scale of which we’ve not really seen since – anything containing an em dash was immediately discounted as AI slop, whether it was or it wasn’t (fun fact: the dash above is called an en dash, the more you know!).
But now AI’s got its mitts on more substantial work – your website.
AI websites are popping up all over the place. Open five SME websites, and odds are high that you’ll see the same pages in similar colours and default fonts.
Now, just to preface, we are not anti-AI (in fact, we talk openly about how we use AI here). What we are is pro-careful-use-of-AI. AI website builders can be a sensible choice for SMEs with a limited budget. The problem is that hundreds of businesses in the same market are all relying solely on these tools to build their digital presence.
What does this mean for your business? Let’s start at the beginning…
Where has the “AI website” look come from?
One of the biggest AI website tells is the classic “AI indigo” – the most common colour AI tools use if not properly prompted. It even has its own unique origin story (one that predates the AI tools).
At some point in 2020, while building Tailwind UI (the official component library for the Tailwind CSS framework), Adam Wathan needed a default colour for the buttons in the examples.
He chose indigo.
It looked professional without being dull; it worked with white text, and it clashed with almost nothing. Tailwind then became one of the most widely used CSS frameworks on the web, and that default was copied into thousands of tutorials, starter templates and half-finished repositories, all of which eventually became training data.
In August 2025, Wathan even posted a mock apology on X for having turned every AI-generated interface on earth indigo.
Generative tools return the average of what they were trained on. Ask it for a “modern landing page”, and give it nothing else, and you can bet your bottom dollar you’ll get an indigo gradient with a clean sans-serif font and the three-column grid layout. It’s the average – the AI tool is doing exactly what it’s trained to do.
Every business that gives a non-specific prompt gets the same non-specific answer. As a result, everyone’s websites are starting to look exactly the same.
Is it really that big a deal? What’s at risk?
Inherently, no – AI website builders are usually fine. Not exceptional; average, as they’re programmed to be.
The problem comes from the fact that, if a potential customer is comparing your website against several competitors, the one competitor that stands out the most is the one most likely to be selected.
So, if one of your competitors has a bespoke, thoughtfully branded website, and your website is the same as everyone else’s, you’re missing out on:
- Brand distinctiveness – Your website is often the first real impression a prospect forms of your business. A generic AI-built website can leave a poor impression, especially if it lacks your brand’s personality.
- Search visibility – Search engines, and increasingly AI search tools, reward content that demonstrates genuine expertise and clear structure built around real customer intent. A templated AI build with generic copy gives search engines little to differentiate you on. If your competitors are running similar generic copy through similar generic structures, nobody is giving search engines a reason to rank one above another.
- Conversion performance – A site can look good and still convert poorly. Where call-to-action buttons sit, how forms are worded, the overall user experience, the content you feature on each page – these decisions should be made based on your unique understanding of your customers, not from a template trained on averages across thousands of businesses. AI tools are good at producing a finished look, but they’re not good at understanding why a buyer says no.
- Trust signals – Buyers are increasingly able to spot a generic AI-built site, in the same way they can spot generic AI-written copy. If you’re not delivering a unique, customer-focused experience, why should they trust that you’ll provide a quality, customer-focused service/product?
How to know if a website has obvious AI tells
A website’s got one of these tells? Probably nothing to worry about. Multiple? Visitors will smell AI faster than you can say “contact us!”
Common tells include:
- Inter fonts, or very similar sans-serif fonts, and no second typeface anywhere to be seen
- A dark hero background with a blurred purple or violet glow sitting behind the headline
- Gradient text on the main headline
- Three equal-sized feature cards in a row
- A generic headline that could be for any business in the sector: “Transform the way you work”, “The all-in-one platform”, “Scale without limits”
- Stock photography of an unusually cheerful team pointing at a laptop
- Everything being centred, with the same fade-in animation on every element as you scroll
Familiar layouts aren’t the problem
Common website templates aren’t the problem here. In fact, studies show that participants respond more positively to websites that meet expectations. Conventional layouts are “easier to read and easier to trust”, which is why your navigation usually sits at the top of the page, and your phone number lives in your footer.
So if it’s not the look that’s killing AI website performance, what is?
It’s the copy.
AI isn’t yet able to properly articulate who you are, what your business’ purpose is, who it’s for and why anyone should pick you over anyone else. Basically, your website may look fairly generic; that’s not the end of the world, but if it sounds generic, that’s where the problems start.
If you do only one thing, ensure that your webcopy is written by a professional who understands your brand and your industry. If your messaging is off, your website will never convert how you need it to.
We’ve got a team of expert B2B copywriters who specialise in verbalising what’s unique about your business. Why not have a quick chat with them?
Considering using an AI tool for your website? Ask these 4 questions:
- What’s unique about our business and how do we tell our story in a way that will improve conversions?
- Have we thought about what a visitor needs to see and do at each stage of the buyer journey (and can our AI website align with this)?
- Is our copy written around real search intent and our actual customers, or is it generic filler dressed up in our brand colours?
- Have we checked how the site performs technically: page speed, structure, mobile experience, and whether it’s set up to be found by both traditional search and AI-driven search?
AI can’t do this thinking for you. What it can do is put a nice little website live for you, but it can’t understand your position in the market, know what your competitors are getting wrong, or make a good call about what messages will resonate with your unique audience.
Don’t settle for generic – it’s time for a second opinion
Having worked on 100s of website projects at this point, we can say one thing for certain: you’re way too close to your business to make objective decisions.
AI tools are great for helping things run smoothly, but they really shouldn’t be handling entire projects on your behalf.
My recommendation? If you’re looking to improve your digital presence, talk to our specialists first.
Our business growth audit is designed to answer many of the questions we’ve brought up in this blog and more. It’ll deliver you in-depth competitor and market research, a review of your current site, a deep-dive into your messaging and business proposition, and a whole lot of critical marketing information you may well be lacking right now.
Don’t take a leap of faith with your new website. Talk to our team and do things properly.
(And again, we’re not saying don’t use an AI tool; we’re saying just make sure you’re properly informed and prepared before you do.)
