AI Slop in Software Development Is Probably Not as Bad as You Think

AI Slop in Software Development Is Probably Not as Bad as You Think

There’s a lot of discussion lately about “AI slop”: landing pages that look AI-generated, apps built with AI, generic copy, familiar UI patterns, and products that developers can immediately recognize as “vibe coded.”

But I think we sometimes forget something:

Most of our customers are not developers.

I’d bet that 90%+ of the people visiting your landing page or downloading your app have absolutely no idea whether you used Claude, Codex, Cursor, Lovable, or spent three weeks writing everything manually.

And more importantly: they probably don’t care. They care about whether the product solves their problem.

Does the landing page explain what you do?

Can they sign up?

Can they complete the task they came for?

Does the app work?

Is it useful?

That’s it.

Developers are extremely good at recognizing the patterns that come from AI-generated software because we spend every day looking at software and AI tools. We see the same gradients, cards, copy structures, dashboards, icons, and layouts and immediately think: “AI slop.”

The average customer might just think: “Okay, I understand what this product does.”

And for a POC, MVP, internal tool, or early-stage product, that distinction matters a lot.

If AI lets you build something functional, effective, and testable in two days instead of two weeks, obsessing over whether another developer can tell that AI helped build it might be optimizing for completely the wrong audience.

Of course, there’s a limit.

AI slop becomes a real problem when it affects usability, reliability, accessibility, security, performance, or the credibility of the product.

And multimedia is probably different. People are becoming much better at recognizing AI-generated images and videos, and in some contexts they actively dislike them.

But software?

I think we need to be careful not to confuse “developers can tell this was built with AI” with “customers think this is a bad product.”

Those are two very different things.

Early on, I’d rather have an AI-assisted product that looks a little generic but solves a real problem than a beautifully handcrafted product that took three months to build before we discovered nobody wanted it.

Build fast. Validate. Get users.

Then remove the slop that actually matters.

Unless your customers are developers.

Then yeah… good luck 😂