You're paying for AI. $20/month, maybe $200. Of course you want it to be magic.
That's the trap. You paid money, so your brain wants results. You want to describe what you want and have it appear, perfect, ready to ship. Like a genie.
But here's what actually happens: you slowly accept "good enough." You keep prompting, keep iterating, keep spending tokens. Before you know it, your product looks like everyone else's product. You became a boiling frog and didn't notice.
The ones who stand out in 2026 accepted a different reality. AI is leverage, not a magic pill.
The slopidemic
"AI Slop" was Word of the Year 2025. Merriam-Webster and the American Dialect Society both picked it.
Everyone has access to the same tools. v0, lovable, bolt, cursor, gemini, claude, you name it. All producing similar outputs when used the default way. 82% of AI-generated sites/apps share the same layouts. Same onboarding flows. Same card-based UIs. Same everything.
When your product looks like everyone else's, you're invisible. 1.2% conversion rate for generic AI output vs 2.8% for custom work. That's 2.3x worse. Brand recall drops 25% when there's nothing distinctive to remember.
55% of consumers feel uncomfortable when they sense AI was behind the marketing. Not because AI is bad. Because they can tell nobody cared enough to make it unique.
If you're shipping slop, you're cooked.
The hierarchy that works
Stop expecting AI to be the genie. Start with specialized solutions first.
1. Expert, agency, or team
Hire someone who understands both design and development. Someone who knows what distinctive looks like in your market. Still the gold standard.
2. Specialized platforms
Find tools built by people who understand your specific craft. Not generic AI builders, but platforms where the craft comes first and AI assists.
My picks: Framer for websites, Figma for design. Claude for coding. Find yours for your domain.
3. AI as leverage on top
Now add AI. Not as the genie that does everything. As the multiplier that accelerates what you're already doing.
Most people reverse this. They start with generic AI tools, hope for magic, get slop.
The question isn't whether to use AI. It's 2026. Everyone uses AI. The question is: are you using it to do the same thing as everyone else, or to multiply your edge?
Case Study
Maryam is an Apple software engineer building a matcha community called MBM (Matcha by Maryam). Events, content, products, partnerships across the US and Canada.
She had a Next.js site she built "just to share" her matcha journey. Functional but generic. Looked like any other hobby blog. No time to make it special. Work at Apple, sourcing matcha from Japan, planning events. Something had to give.
Problem: when you're pitching to brands, your website IS your credibility. Generic website means generic perception.
She could have kept prompting AI tools. Kept hoping for the genie. That's the boiling frog trap.
What we did instead: specialized solution + AI leverage.
First, strategy questions. What should visitors feel? What makes MBM different from other matcha content? What patterns are competitors overdoing?
Then Figma/Gemini prototyping. Built with Framer. AI for speed and iteration. Human direction for differentiation.
The before: generic site, could have been any matcha blog.
The after:
- Instant welcoming and memorable EXPERIENCE for target audience
- The right green that felt like nature, growth, freshness.
- Minimal motion. Enough to feel alive and premium, not gimmicky.
- Copy speaking directly to matcha lovers. Inside jokes. The feeling of belonging.
Result: people praise her. They trust her more to do deals. The website became an asset, not just a checkbox. +65% trust boost with human refinement is real.
That's what happens when you stop hoping for the genie and start using the hierarchy.
P.S. We also extended to brochures, Luma-inspired app designs, React Native prototypes. AI accelerated all of it. But the manual craft came first.
The multiplier
Most people use AI to reduce effort. Same output, less work.
Flip it.
Use AI to multiply output. Same effort, more results.
SPEED × QUALITY × VOLUME
Not additive. Multiplicative.
10x iterations. 10x experiments. 10x directions explored. That's where distinctive comes from. Not from one magic prompt, but from the volume of attempts with human direction.
Closing
Accept reality. Think different. Act different.
When everyone uses the same tools the same way, the ones who stand out are the ones who refused to settle for the default output.
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