Zach Leatherman: AI-generated websites fail performance and accessibility tests
Web developer finds 12 of 13 AI-built sites flunk Core Web Vitals and accessibility standards, questioning whether automation improves user experience.
What to know
- AI-generated websites in Leatherman's analysis fail basic performance and accessibility standards: 12 of 13 sites flunk Lighthouse and Axe checks.
- The central question remains contested: whether AI tooling that speeds up development actually produces better software for end users or just more of it.
- Developers emphasize code quality concerns, citing AI's tendency to generate bloated, unreliable output despite claims of improved workflow efficiency.
AI tooling generates bloated, unreliable code that harms user experience despite claims of developer productivity gains.
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“AI: *replaces four lines of semantic HTML with 80 megabytes of div soup, three hallucinated npm packages, and a loader that spins forever*”
Lobsters commenter · Lobsters ↗
New tooling and compare features improve developer resources and are valuable additions to web performance measurement.
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“Love the new compare feature. The filmstrip is very cool. It's impressive to see new features added to what already began as a comprehensive resource.”
Commenter · Mastodon/Lobsters ↗
Zach Leatherman Web developer, Font Awesome builder, creator of Eleventy
How it unfolded 2 developments, newest first · click a bar or a number to jump posts
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Developer responses highlight AI-generated code bloat and poor quality
Comments on Leatherman's post illustrate frustration with AI output, with developers describing bloated code generation and reliability concerns.
“AI: *replaces four lines of semantic HTML with 80 megabytes of div soup, three hallucinated npm packages, and a loader that spins forever*…”
— Lobsters commenter -
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““AI, make the website good”” by @ zachleat 🔗 https://www. zachleat.com/web/ai-websites/ > I’m always left wondering (suspecting the answer with hopeful optimism that my hunch is wrong this time): do these workflow improvements actually improve how people (technical or otherwise) experience software? Certainly we have more software. But is it…
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Leatherman publishes analysis of AI-generated website quality
Web developer Zach Leatherman releases article examining whether AI-assisted development tools improve user experience. He reports that Speedlify's AI category shows a failing median Core Web Vitals score, with 12 of 13 sites failing Lighthouse performance and Axe accessibility checks.
“do these workflow improvements actually improve how people (technical or otherwise) experience software? Certainly we have more software. But is it better? I don't know.”
— Zach Leatherman