Every AI-Built Website Looks the Same. Here's Why

Quick read: In early July 2026, Wix-owned AI website-generation tool Base44 confirmed to Business Insider that it trained its own specialized model, called Base 1, specifically to fight the generic look of AI-generated websites. CEO Maor Shlomo said general-purpose frontier models are "generically good at everything," which is exactly why their design output tends to converge on the same look. Separately, AI-design startup Impeccable's founder Paul Bakaus described the result as an "algorithmic Uniqlo or Ikea" — beige or tinted backgrounds, generic sans-serif type, rounded cards.

Look, I didn't need Business Insider to tell me this. I've been opening other people's "finished" websites for years and guessing, correctly, which AI builder made them before I even check the page source. But it's a different thing when the people who build these tools say it about their own product, on the record, with their name attached. That happened this month, twice, from two different companies that have every reason to talk their own tech up instead.

So let's talk about what's actually going on, why it matters more than it sounds like it should, and what to do about it if you're staring at a homepage that looks like it was assembled from the same five parts as everyone else's.

What's actually happening here

Large language models — the kind powering most "build me a website" tools — learn design patterns from an enormous, averaged sample of existing web design. Ask one to build a site with no other direction and it reaches for the statistical middle of that sample: a light or beige background, a sans-serif headline, a hero section with a button, three feature cards with rounded corners underneath. None of it is wrong, exactly. It's also not yours. It's the visual equivalent of ordering "food" at a restaurant and getting whatever's most averagely popular.

Shlomo's own explanation is the clearest version of this I've seen from inside one of these companies: the models are built to be "generically good at everything," from writing a poem to writing a login form, and that breadth is precisely why the output looks the same across totally unrelated businesses. A plumber's site and a pilates studio's site, built by the same tool with the same defaults, can end up sharing a color palette, a font, and a card layout, because nothing in the process pushed either one toward being distinct. Bakaus's list of tells — the beige, the sans-serif, the rounded cards — is basically a field guide at this point. Once you know to look for it, you start seeing the same three ingredients on business after business after business.

Why this actually matters, not just aesthetically

Here's the part that isn't just a design nitpick: a homepage's whole job is to answer, fast, whether this business is for you — and sameness undercuts that job before a single word gets read. If your site looks like the twenty other local businesses that ran the exact same prompt through the exact same tool, a visitor's brain doesn't register "professional." It registers "generic," and generic reads as forgettable at best and untrustworthy at worst — closer to a template than to a business somebody actually runs. I've written before about how a homepage has about five seconds to prove it's worth staying on; visual sameness burns through a chunk of that five seconds before your headline has even been read, because the visitor's pattern-matching has already filed the page under "seen this."

I get why owners reach for a fast AI builder in the first place. I ran a dog grooming salon for years before this, and I know exactly how much time is actually left over for "build a website" once the doors are locked for the day — roughly none. A tool that spits out something presentable before your coffee's cold is genuinely appealing when the alternative is a project that competes with payroll and inventory for your attention. That instinct isn't the problem. The problem is that the tool optimizes for fast and presentable, not for yours, and those aren't the same thing even when the output looks clean.

The part that's fixable without starting over

None of this means every AI-assisted site is a lost cause, and it doesn't mean the fix is "throw it out and start from scratch" in every case. What actually varies from business to business is structure and substance — what you say, in what order, backed by what proof. What tends not to vary, left on default settings, is the skin: the palette, the type, the card shapes, the stock-photo energy. A site can follow a sound structure — the hero-headline-proof-offer-CTA order that actually converts — and still look like it was cut from the same bolt of cloth as three competitors down the street.

That's the useful diagnostic, actually: pull your site up next to a competitor's and ask whether the parts that should be different — what you do, who you're for, why someone should pick you over the guy two exits down — are the parts that actually differ, or whether everything differs except those parts. If your unique selling point is buried under a color scheme and font choice that could belong to anybody, that's a signal the build optimized for speed over identity, and it's worth a second look before you spend another dollar on ads pointing at it.

That gap — a tool built to be fast and generically competent versus a build made to actually be yours — is the entire reason Base44 says it trained its own model, and it's the same reason a hand-built, human-reviewed site holds up over time in a way a default-settings AI output usually doesn't: someone actually looked at the result and asked whether it fit the business, instead of shipping whatever the model produced on the first pass. It's also worth knowing this isn't automatically the expensive option — custom doesn't have to mean agency pricing; it means a different cost structure, not a higher floor by definition.

What won't fix it

A few things people try that don't actually solve the sameness problem:

• Swapping the color theme. Changing beige to navy doesn't change the underlying layout logic. It's a new coat of paint on the same generic frame — still recognizable as the same tool's output to anyone who's seen a few dozen of them.
• Regenerating the design a few more times. Left on defaults, most tools will hand you a different flavor of the same averaged output, not something genuinely distinct. Base44's whole pitch for training Base 1 was that regenerating with a general model wasn't solving this — it needed a purpose-built approach.
• Adding more stock photography. More generic imagery on top of a generic layout is still generic. It just costs you a licensing fee for the privilege.
• Waiting for the tools to fix it themselves. They might, eventually — that's literally what Base44 is trying to do right now. But your site is live today, and "wait for version two" isn't a homepage strategy.

FAQ

Why do so many small business websites look the same?

Because a large share of them were built by the same handful of AI tools, using largely the same default settings, trained on largely the same sample of existing web design. The tools are optimized to produce something presentable quickly, not something visually distinct — so businesses in completely different industries can end up with the same background color, font, and card layout.

Is it actually a Wix/Base44-specific problem?

No — Base44's CEO has said the sameness is a byproduct of general-purpose AI models being "generically good at everything," not a flaw unique to one product. It shows up across most AI website-generation tools for the same underlying reason: they're trained to average across a huge sample, and averages look alike.

How can I tell if my website has the "AI-built" look?

Check for the common tells: a beige or lightly tinted background, a generic sans-serif headline font, feature sections built from rounded cards, and stock photography that could belong to almost any business. None of these are individually a problem — the issue is when all of them show up together with nothing distinct layered on top.

Do I need to rebuild my whole site to fix this?

Not necessarily. Structure and content — what you say, in what order, backed by what proof — are usually salvageable. What typically needs the most work is the visual layer: the parts that were left on default settings instead of adjusted to reflect your specific business.

Does a generic-looking site actually hurt business, or is this just a design preference?

It affects trust and recall. A homepage's job is to answer "what is this, is it for me, what do I do next" fast — and a visually generic site makes that first impression forgettable, which works against the goal of standing out from every other business a visitor is comparing you against.

What's the alternative to an AI website builder?

A hand-built site where a person actually looks at the result and adjusts it to fit your specific business, rather than shipping whatever the model produced by default. That doesn't mean avoiding AI tools in the process — it means someone reviews the output instead of publishing it unchecked.

Will AI website builders eventually solve this?

Maybe. Base44 training its own model specifically to combat design sameness suggests the companies themselves see it as a real problem worth engineering around, not a users'-perception issue. But that's a future fix for a tool, not a fix for the site you have live right now.

If your current site has the tells — or you're weighing an AI builder against something that's actually yours from the start — the Build path is where that conversation starts.