However, my answer to this question isn’t so black and white. Yes, AI can help build your website, but the better answer is: “not all by itself.” In this email, I will explore why human expertise remains crucial, how complex projects are beyond the scope of what’s available now, and how researchers and futurists envision the balance between AI and web design.
The Allure and Limits of AI Website Builders Today
First off, I’m a huge AI fan… It feels like I’m using AI for almost all aspects of my life these days. And to be transparent, a good amount of the content in this email was initially generated by Deep Research AI. We build and manage websites every day, so it really is a tool that we have become very familiar with, use already in our projects, and hope to integrate more in the future. However, the one-stop AI web shop isn’t a reality (at least for our clients) that is here… yet.
Current state of fully automated website builders:
- Speed and Convenience: AI systems can assemble a basic website incredibly fast, which is a boon when time is of the essence. This rapid turnaround can be useful for simple sites or quick campaign landing pages.
- Lower Upfront Costs: Using AI is generally cheaper upfront than hiring professional designers and developers. Small businesses save on initial budgets, and solopreneurs can get online without a large investment.
- Automation of Repetitive Tasks: AI can help speed up content creation, analyze current pages and structures, and make recommendations based on the state of your site. On top of that, many AI site builders let you add pages or products with just a few clicks.
These advantages explain why some predict AI will “transform websites into more conversational, dynamic, and tailored experiences” in the coming years. We already see AI chatbots handling customer queries and AI tools auto-generating text or imagery. It’s exciting (to us web nerds) to imagine websites that customize themselves on the fly for each visitor.
Style
Current AI-designed sites often lack the polish and strategy of a human-crafted website, missing out on design trends, or technologies that are available to improve UX. AI may churn out a passable layout, but it tends to be cookie-cutter. The visual choices (imagery, typography, spacing) can feel off-target or generic because the AI doesn’t truly understand your brand’s story or your users’ mindset. It can’t (yet) internalize the audience’s emotional needs or a company’s unique value proposition the way a human can. And I’m not saying it won’t get there, but currently, it’s not to a level that I would be okay with utilizing for my brand, let alone for my clients.
Scope
Websites are more than just pretty pages – they are like houses with complex wiring behind the walls. Building a great site is a multifaceted project requiring strategy, creative design, content writing, backend development, integrations, testing, and ongoing optimization. Current AI tools can assist with some of these pieces (layout generation, boilerplate code, content drafts), but they struggle to handle the full scope.
If you’ve spent a lot of time with an LLM you’re probably aware of how hallucinations start to enter into the output the longer the conversation goes. This means that longer, complex activities almost always require being broken down into smaller chunks of work that have clear outputs that can be verified. So, you may get a decent first pass, but by the time you’re working on pass 5, 10, 20, 30, the human element becomes more and more important to create quality control.
Content
It should go without mentioning, that we’ve all become way more aware of what AI-generated content looks and sounds like. And I believe that there’s a growing shared opinion that it can be seen as taking the easy way out and not truly providing your own insights. Some of that content you had GPT 2.0 spitting out for you in 2022 might need to be re-addressed if it’s still out there.
Misleading Promises
Many AI platforms advertise “no technical skills needed,” but that applies only to very basic sites. In reality, to get a truly effective website, you still need expertise in areas like conversion rate optimization, UX best practices, and marketing strategy. Without those, you might end up with a site that technically exists but doesn’t perform – it won’t magically generate sales or leads without a human-driven strategy behind it.
A website is an expression of business strategy and brand storytelling. AI has no business acumen or creative vision on its own – it won’t conduct stakeholder interviews, empathize with customer journeys, or iterate a design concept to find the most compelling approach.
Our experience as marketers and designers – talking through a client’s goals, understanding their customers’ pain points, and crafting a tailored user experience – cannot be fully automated. At least, not yet. For example, AI might plaster a pop-up signup form on multiple pages because some data says “it converts well,” but a human team might know your users value a subtle approach and would be turned off by aggressive pop-ups. AI cannot grasp those trade-offs without human guidance.
A Peek Into the Future: “Living” Websites
While today’s AI tools have some shortcomings, I do want to consider where things are heading. Researchers and futurists do see a path where AI plays a much larger role in web development and digital experiences – perhaps in ways that enhance what websites can do, rather than simply trying to copy human designers. In fact, rather than making websites less relevant, AI could make the next generation of websites even more central to marketing and sales, moving us away from the static “digital brochure” into a highly dynamic, interactive hub that serves both human visitors and AI assistants.
Imagine a website that isn’t a fixed set of pages, but a fluid interface that adapts in real-time, almost like a conversation. Instead of navigating menus, a visitor might engage with an AI concierge on the site: “Hey, I’m looking for product to solve this problem…” – and the site’s AI instantly discusses the pros/cons, asks clarifying questions, produces potential solutions, and works the problem out almost like a sales engineer would. This is the kind of conversational and personalized experience I would love to see in the next five years. AI-driven sites could reference vast knowledge bases beyond just the content on your site, able to answer intricate questions on the spot and become the initial planner for how your customers’ engagement will be. We already see the seeds of this in advanced chat widgets on some sites.
Going a step further, some technologists envision “living interfaces” or autonomous digital agents that manage websites. In this scenario, the website becomes an AI agent itself – one that can redesign and optimize itself continuously. Your future website could restructure its layout and content on the fly for each visitor (or for each context), test improvements via AI-driven experiments, and instantly adjust to maximize engagement or conversions – all by itself. This turns the website into an active, evolving participant in your business growth, not just a passive tool. While this level of autonomy is just emerging (and likely initially limited to specific use-cases like landing page optimization), it points to a future where human teams set high-level goals and an AI agent (with human oversight) continually fine-tunes the digital experience in response to the data they both analyze.
So, what’s the answer? Can AI build you a website?
In 2025, the honest answer is: Yes, AI can build you a website, but not necessarily the website you need.
If your goal is to have a distinctive, strategy-driven, and high-performing web presence, AI alone isn’t a silver bullet. The best outcomes will come from blending the two: using AI where it adds value (speed, data-driven adaptation, efficiency) and using human insight where it matters most (brand, creativity, complex problem-solving).
