Lazy websites

As recently as last summer, I added a new bookmark folder in Safari called “A.I. Slop”. It’s not a folder for articles I suspect to be A.I.-generated; it’s mostly about how the websites look. Some of them are actually good, fun, and useful sites. They just happen to look like every other website designed with A.I. (Claude Design, if my CSS palate identifies it correctly). You know that look. It’s been documented often, most famously in a New Yorker article that described it as a “Claudian sameness”: off-white/beige background, orange or bright green/yellow accent colour, italic serifs for titles (sometimes just partly), and spaced small-caps subtitles. And don’t forget the cute little capsule buttons, with the thin outline that does something fancy on hover. How original. This bookmark folder was initiated only as a way to document these many encounters, for future reference if you will. I’m not blaming the people behind these sites for using this style. They want something quick,…