I was there in 2008 when WordPress showed up. A lot of developers thought — not me — that the work would dry up because every business could build their own website. Spoiler: many tried. The result was an avalanche of horrible sites, most of them slapped on free templates that anyone with two seconds of attention could spot from across the room. And actual development work, done right, ended up commanding higher rates.
I've seen this movie. Three times.
I was also there in 2012 when Wix arrived. Not much worth writing about that one.
I was there in 2015 when Webflow launched. That time I'll include myself among the developers who thought a new era for digital work was finally here. Building something that worked well and looked good at the same time suddenly felt possible. It was genuinely exciting.
That didn't happen either. At least not in Mexico. Most businesses never even heard of Webflow and kept using the generic — and honestly ugly — WordPress templates. I can spot one at a glance now. It's not hard.
Necessary clarification: I have nothing against WordPress. It's a solid platform and at Play.Interactive we've used it well for years. Like any tool, what matters is who's using it and why.
But there's a massive difference between using WordPress as a foundation to build something solid, and downloading a free template, swapping the logo, and calling it a «professional website».
Now it's 2026, and AI is doing the same thing — but faster
Recently, during a call, someone shared their website. It took me exactly 0.2 seconds to realize it was built with AI and a generic prompt.
Because you can tell.
Just like anyone who grew up eating tortillas can spot the right side from the wrong side without anyone teaching them — anyone who knows even the basics of design or development can immediately recognize an AI-generated site within ten minutes. There are patterns. A certain rhythm to the copy. A particular layout of sections that smells like «I filled out a form and hit generate».
And to be clear: I'm not criticizing AI. I'm completely in favor of it. I think it's going to help us build far better things. I use it every day. The Play.Interactive team uses it every day.
The problem isn't the tool. The problem is believing the tool replaces judgment.
The difference between using AI and depending on AI
A carpenter with a good saw can build beautiful furniture. A carpenter without judgment with that same saw is just going to produce crooked boards faster.
AI dramatically accelerates the work of someone who already knows what they're doing. It gives them superpowers. But it also accelerates the work of someone who doesn't know what they're doing. And that produces exactly what we saw with WordPress in 2008: an avalanche of mediocre things hitting the market faster than ever.
What does a site built with a generic AI prompt actually look like? Usually the structure is technically correct. The colors are tolerable. The copy isn't terrible. But something is missing — something hard to name and very easy to feel: intention. Every design decision was made by statistical probability, not by someone who understood your customer, your market, and what you specifically need to communicate.
And that shows. Not always in an obvious way. Sometimes just as a feeling of «this isn't quite convincing me» that the user can't articulate — but acts on anyway. They leave.
Here's my take, not necessarily a kind one:
I think another storm is coming — call it a wave, an avalanche, whatever you like — of things built poorly. And it's going to be bigger than the previous ones because the barrier to entry has never been lower. It's never been easier to produce something that looks «good enough» without actually being good enough.
But I'm not here to tell you that's a bad thing. It's the opposite.
Every time the market floods with mediocre work, work done right becomes more valuable, not less. It happened with WordPress. It happened with Wix. It's going to happen with AI. History is consistent on this.
In a world where any business can have an AI-generated website in 20 minutes, the businesses that have a site built with judgment, strategy, and attention to detail — those shine brighter than gold. The market always learns to tell the difference.
What the market rewards when there's noise
When everyone has access to the same tools, the differentiator isn't the tool. It's the judgment of whoever's using it. In a market flooded with generic sites, things built right don't just stand out — they get remembered, shared, and become the standard everything else gets measured against.
What 'done right' actually means for a website in 2026
It's not just that it looks good. That's the baseline.
Done right means it loads fast — on any device, on any connection. It means the visitor understands within five seconds what the company does and why it should matter to them. It means the site shows up when someone searches, not just on Google, but in the generative AI engines that more and more people are using to make purchasing decisions.
That last point is new, and most businesses still aren't factoring it in. GEO — Generative Engine Optimization — and visibility in AI search is an additional layer on top of traditional SEO that determines whether your company shows up when someone asks ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Google AI Overviews who solves a specific problem in your industry.
A site generated with an AI prompt in 20 minutes is almost never optimized for any of that. Because optimizing for it requires thinking, not just generating.
Done right also means clean, maintainable code built with technologies that will still be working in two years. At Play.Interactive we work with React, Next.js, Astro, and Vite for the frontend, and Node.js, Laravel, or serverless platforms for the backend — not because it sounds impressive, but because those technologies build things that last and scale. You can read more about our approach at our web development service.
Three signs your site is on the wrong side of the storm
- It was built in less than a week, on a template someone else already used — one you could probably find on another site if you looked.
- The copy sounds correct but generic. You could swap your company name for any competitor's and the site would still make sense.
- You don't show up in Google when someone searches for what you do — not because you lack content, but because the site wasn't built to be found.
If any of those landed, that's not the end of the world. It's information. And information is useful when you decide to do something with it.
The opportunity you might be missing
What I'm here to tell you isn't «watch out for AI». It's the opposite.
The storm that's coming is an opportunity for you if you decide to do things right. Because your competitors — most of them — are going to rush to generate something fast and cheap. And the market, over time, always learns to tell the difference.
Always.
The client who lands on your website doesn't necessarily know anything about code. But they do know whether the site gives them confidence or not. They know whether the information they need is where they expect it. They know whether the site feels built for them, or generated for no one in particular.
That's where the opportunity lives: in a market full of sites generated for nobody, your site can be the one that feels built specifically for your customer.
If you want to start by understanding where you actually stand — how your business appears (or doesn't) in search and in AI — subscribe to the newsletter. As part of the welcome process you get access to our SEO, GEO, and AEO diagnostic: 12 questions across three blocks, about five minutes, and a clear picture of where you are right now.
And if you'd rather have a tool to monitor this on your own continuously, AEON42 connects to your Google Search Console, analyzes 16 months of real data, and tells you exactly what to adjust — starting at $49/month, with a 14-day free trial, no credit card required.