You've seen a hundred sites this year that look like the same site. Same neutral geometric sans-serif. Same medium-weight headline that's just a bigger version of the body. Same centered hero, same everything. It's competent, it's clean - and it's completely forgettable. Increasingly, that sameness reads as one thing: this was generated, not designed.

The tell, more than any other single thing, is the typography. And the good news is it's one of the easiest things to fix - because "AI slop" typography isn't caused by bad fonts. It's caused by default ones, chosen without a single decision behind them.

AI-slop typography is type that looks machine-generated because it leans on the same defaults as everyone else: a neutral geometric sans (usually Inter), one font doing every job, default weights and spacing, and no real hierarchy. Fixing it takes contrast and a few deliberate choices, not fancier fonts - all covered below.

Why everything converged on one look

AI tools, site builders, and rushed rebuilds all optimize for the same thing: a safe result with zero taste required. So they all reach for the same safe defaults - a neutral geometric sans, default weights, default spacing, one font doing every job. Individually those are fine choices. Collectively, they've become a uniform. When your site wears the same uniform, it inherits the same reputation: low-effort, templated, machine-made.

The stakes aren't cosmetic. A product that looks generated gets treated like it's generated - less trustworthy, less premium, easier to bounce from. Taste is one of the few signals a visitor reads instantly, and typography is where they read it first.

The Inter problem

Let's name the biggest culprit: Inter.

Inter is a genuinely brilliant typeface - we recommend it, we use it, it will never look technically wrong. But that's exactly why it's everywhere. It became the reflexive default of every AI design tool, every starter template, every "I'll fix the fonts later" build. Inter set in Inter, at default weights, with no headline contrast, is now the single most recognizable signature of a generated site.

This isn't "stop using Inter." It's stop using Inter thoughtlessly. Keep it as a body font if you like it - but give it a headline with a point of view, or reach past it entirely to something with more character (DM Sans, Plus Jakarta Sans, Space Grotesk). The font was never the problem. Reaching for the default without a thought is.

The tells - and the fixes

What makes typography look generated, and what to do instead:

1. One font doing everything

The clearest slop signal: a single neutral sans for headings and body, so the headline is just body text scaled up.

Fix: pair. One characterful headline font, one quiet body font. That contrast alone makes a page look designed - see our headline shortlist for the statement half and the UI shortlist for the quiet half.

2. No hierarchy or type scale

Default sizes, everything a little too similar, nothing clearly most-important.

Fix: build a real scale - a decisive jump from body to subhead to headline - and use weight and size to make the reading order obvious. Hierarchy is what separates "laid out" from "designed."

3. Default weights and spacing

Regular everywhere, default line-height, default letter-spacing on big headlines.

Fix: tighten tracking on large display text, give body copy generous line-height, and pick weights on purpose. Small adjustments, disproportionate payoff.

4. The template-default fonts, untouched

Reaching for the most obvious font and changing nothing.

Fix: if you use a popular font, make at least one deliberate move - a distinctive pairing, a considered scale, custom spacing - so it reads as your choice, not the builder's default.

5. No point of view

The deepest one: nothing about the type says who this is for or what it feels like.

Fix: decide on a personality first - refined, technical, playful, editorial - and let a headline font carry it. A font with character over a neutral body is the whole game.

Deliberate beats fancy

You don't need expensive or obscure fonts to escape the slop. Every font we'd recommend is free on Google Fonts. The difference isn't the price or the rarity - it's the decision. (The same slop shows up one layer down, in components - the fix there is the same, and we cover it in the UI libraries we use.) Two typefaces, paired on purpose, on a real scale, with restraint, will out-design any pile of trendy fonts thrown together, and it will never look generated.

That's the honest core of it: looking designed is mostly about caring enough to choose. Taste is a differentiator precisely because so much of the web has stopped exercising it. Making those deliberate choices - so software looks like a person built it, because a person did - is the whole job when we build software at Bruvora.