10 Signs Your Website Was Designed by AI

AI-generated websites are getting easier and faster to create. Tools like Lovable, Bolt, Framer AI, and ChatGPT can produce a polished, AI-designed website in minutes.

But there’s a problem. Many of these websites are starting to look and sound remarkably similar.

From predictable layouts to generic messaging, certain design patterns have become the unofficial signature of AI-generated websites.

Here are 10 telltale signs of an AI-designed website, along with two ways to make yours more original, personal, and memorable.

1. Purple-Blue Gradients Everywhere

Purple-to-blue gradients everywhere, especially in hero sections, backgrounds, and buttons. The unofficial uniform of AI design.

How to do the opposite: Use a restrained, distinctive brand palette that reflects your personality or business. Or use real photography, interesting textures, or natural backgrounds instead of relying on gradients.

2. Giant, Generic Headlines

“Unlock Your Potential,” “Transform Your Business,” or “Elevate Your Success.” Impressive-sounding words that say almost nothing.

How to do the opposite: Write a headline that identifies your specific audience and the outcome you help them achieve. Or lead with a bold opinion, personal insight, or memorable statement that makes people curious to learn more.

3. The Predictable Three-Card Layout

Three perfectly spaced feature cards, each with a little icon, a bold heading, and two sentences. Usually rounded corners.

How to do the opposite: Try an editorial-style layout with varied image sizes, text blocks, and spacing. Or replace generic benefit cards with actual examples, mini case studies, or stories that demonstrate what you do.

4. Rounded Corners on Everything

Buttons, images, cards, testimonials, forms. Nothing is allowed to have a sharp edge.

How to do the opposite: Experiment with square corners and crisp edges to create a more distinctive visual style. Or mix shapes intentionally, giving different elements different treatments instead of making everything look identical.

5. Floating Dashboard Mockups

A beautifully rendered fake analytics dashboard hovering at an angle, often with glowing edges and unrealistic charts.

How to do the opposite: Show actual screenshots of your work, product, or process. Or show your product or service being used by a real person in a real setting, where visitors can imagine themselves experiencing it.

6. Generic AI-Written Copy

Words like empower, seamless, innovative, elevate, unlock, and leverage. Lots of promises, very little personality.

How to do the opposite: Write conversationally, using the language your actual clients use when describing their problems and goals. Or tell specific stories about real situations, challenges, decisions, and results instead of making broad promises.

7. Glowing Effects and Decorative Blobs

Soft colored blurs, glowing orbs, gradient halos, and subtle neon accents decorating otherwise empty space.

How to do the opposite: Use meaningful imagery that supports what you’re trying to communicate. Or create visual interest through strong typography, thoughtful spacing, contrast, and composition instead of decorative effects.

8. The Predictable Section Sequence

Hero → three benefits → how it works → testimonials → pricing → FAQ → final CTA. The website practically builds itself.

How to do the opposite: Structure the page around the actual questions your customers have before making a buying decision. Or build the page around a compelling story, argument, or journey that naturally leads visitors toward working with you.

9. Lucide Icons Everywhere

The same rockets, lightning bolts, shields, checkmarks, and sparkles appearing across completely unrelated industries.

How to do the opposite: Replace decorative icons with photographs, real examples, or illustrations that help communicate your ideas. Or develop a distinctive illustration or icon style that feels genuinely connected to your brand.

10. Beautiful but Soulless Design

Perfect spacing, polished typography, smooth animations — yet almost no original photography, personal stories, distinctive opinions, or evidence of a real human behind the business.

How to do the opposite: Include real photos, personality, opinions, and behind-the-scenes details that reveal who you are. Or feature genuine client stories, specific achievements, and evidence of your experience that gives visitors a reason to trust you.

The Biggest Giveaway of an AI-Designed Website? It Could Belong to Anyone.

None of these design choices is necessarily bad. Rounded corners can look great. Gradients can be beautiful. Three-column layouts can work perfectly well.

And human designers use all these techniques, too.

The problem comes when they’re combined without much thought about the actual business, its audience, or the people behind it.

You end up with a website that looks polished but could just as easily belong to a thousand other businesses.

The goal isn’t simply to make your website look different. It’s to make it feel like it could only belong to you.

That’s especially important for coaches, consultants, and other independent professionals. People aren’t just buying a service. They’re deciding whether they trust you, relate to you, and want to work with you.

Your website should help them make that connection.

And while AI can certainly help you build a website, the personality, thinking, stories, and experience that make it worth visiting still need to come from you.

And yes, this was written by AI but prompted by Kenn Schroder. Errr — I mean me. 😛