The visual signature of generated work, and how to break it

By on

A row of identical white cones

Users cannot articulate what is wrong with the page. They just trust it slightly less. The tells are consistent enough to list, and none of them are mistakes, which is what makes them hard to argue about.

Generated work has settled into a house style, and enough people have now seen enough of it that it reads instantly. Including people who could not name a single thing about typography and would not describe themselves as design-literate.

What they report is not "this looks generated". It is a small drop in trust they cannot explain, which is a harder problem, because you cannot fix a complaint nobody can articulate.

The tells

  • Three feature cards. Always three, always identical visual weight, because balance is the default and choosing what matters is not.
  • Gradient treatment on a headline that is not the most important thing on the page. Emphasis applied evenly is emphasis applied to nothing.
  • Copy that is grammatical, on topic and says nothing. It survives a read-through and leaves no residue.
  • Icons from four different visual languages sharing one row. Each was individually reasonable.
  • Spacing that is consistent everywhere and hierarchical nowhere. Everything breathes equally, so nothing leads.

Why competence became the signal

None of those are errors, which is the difficulty. Every one would pass a review. The common thread is the absence of a decision: each element is the safe average of what that element usually looks like.

Human work carries evidence of choices, including slightly odd ones. A section that is deliberately cramped because it is less important. A photograph that is not quite polished because it is real. Those cost something to produce, which is exactly why they register as authentic.

The cheapest fix

One deliberate, specific choice per page that a model would not have volunteered. Not five. One is enough to change how the whole page reads.

  • A real photograph of a real thing, even an imperfect one.
  • One sentence in a recognisably human voice, ideally with a specific detail in it.
  • An element that breaks the grid because the content earned it.
  • Unequal weighting between the three cards, because one of them actually is more important.

Where to start

  • Open your highest-traffic page and count how many elements have equal visual weight. Then decide which one should win.
  • Find the most generic sentence on the page and replace it with something only your team could have written.
  • Replace one stock image with a real photograph, even a worse one.
  • Ask someone outside the team which part of the page they trust least. They will usually point straight at the generated section without knowing why.

Tags: design, ai, craft