Launching a website using AI may seem like the ideal solution these days: fast, inexpensive and accessible without any technical skills. Numerous tools promise to automatically generate pages, texts, a structure or even a complete design in just a few minutes. This apparent ease of use responds to a real need: to exist online quickly, to test an idea or produce an initial medium without mobilising too many resources.
But six months after generating a site using AI, you end up spending more time maintaining it than using it. What was supposed to simplify an online presence has become a burden. Every modification calls for another, every addition creates inconsistencies elsewhere. It's hard to understand why what seemed so simple at the outset has become so complicated to manage.
This paradox is neither an accident nor a usability flaw. It reveals a structural mechanism that is rarely explained when generating a site with AI: the silent accumulation of what might be called a coherence debt.
What is consistency debt?
Accumulation of inconsistencies in a digital service, resulting from decisions taken without an overall vision. It manifests itself in fragmented experiences, contradictory messages and implicit rules that vary from page to page or channel to channel, making the service difficult to understand, use or trust. In the long term, it degrades the user experience, makes maintenance more cumbersome and slows down product development. See detailed definition.
Let's take a concrete example: a consultancy generates its site in October, the texts are correct and the layout acceptable. In December, the senior partner herself writes a «Our approach» page to better reflect the firm's positioning. In February, a new service is added via AI. In March, the blog was launched with articles written in-house. As a result, the site becomes a heterogeneous assemblage. Automatically generated pages sit alongside hand-edited content, language levels diverge and navigation logic becomes blurred. The promises made on the homepage no longer correspond to the content of the pages inside. In short, itineraries become incoherent.
Consistency debt accumulates mechanically, adjustment after adjustment, without us realising it at the time. By the time you realise it, the consequences of this debt are clearly visible and permeate the entire organisation.
What are the limits of automatic AI generation?
Can we blame AI for creating this debt? Not really. Generative AI produces plausible content, not content that is consistent with an organisation's reality. It has no access to its strategic vision, its editorial decisions or its history. Automated generation is not based on an overall vision, but on assembling plausible content, without remembering the strategic choices already made.
Each modification made after the initial generation with the AI creates a discrepancy. And as the AI does not «remember» any of these adjustments, any new generation - an additional page, a blog post - starts again from the initial statistical model, without taking account of changes. What the AI produces is consistent locally, page by page, but rarely globally.
In this way, debt accumulates by ricochet: each new generation ignores previous corrections, forcing new interventions, which themselves call for other adjustments to maintain a minimum of overall coherence.
This debt remains invisible as long as the site is not really used (a one-page showcase site, for example), but as soon as it becomes a genuine tool for raising awareness, generating traffic, converting visitors or serving as a work tool, the inconsistencies cease to be anecdotal.
A possible divide between online and real experience
For organisations that combine a physical and digital presence, generating a site using AI can create a divide between the online experience and the experience at the point of sale. The user who discovers the AI-generated site, then walks through the door of the point of sale, is faced with two distinct brand identities. The tone is no longer the same, the promises no longer match, the attention to detail is different. What they read online does not prepare them for what they will experience in person, and vice versa.
The homogenisation of content linked to AI also poses another problem: it dilutes the uniqueness of an organisation and weakens its credibility. A website is a living interface between an organisation and people with different needs, doubts and contexts. The user experience is based on a detailed understanding of these intentions.
Generating a site with just a few clicks may give the illusion of having made progress or of having done a good job. But an effective website is a living interface between an organisation and the world. It carries choices, biases, a way of understanding customers. It has to be thought through, arbitrated, aligned with what the organisation is and what it is aiming for.
Technical collateral damage to be anticipated
Over time, on sites generated entirely by AI, it becomes difficult to intervene without creating new imbalances. Modifying one page disorganises another, and adding content means reworking the whole thing to maintain logic. Some organisations end up calling for help to try and repair the structure, form and content - which, at At this stage, it is always costly and rarely fully satisfactory.
In addition to the impact on maintenance, the automatic generation approach generates other collateral damage. Take digital accessibility, It's an approach that runs through the whole design process. AI site generators often produce structures that appear compliant on the surface, but show inconsistencies as soon as they are tested with disabled users. These flaws are not obvious at first glance, but they exclude part of the audience and expose them to increasing legal risks.
As far as SEO is concerned, AI-generated sites produce surface-level technical SEO. They have not built up any editorial positioning: there is no reason for them to be quoted, shared or recommended. They don't generate qualified traffic, just traffic.
The same logic applies, an incoherent site attracts scattered traffic: visitors who are not always the right ones. Those who stay do not find a clear answer to their needs. Sometimes they fill in the contact form, but their expectations are unclear, out of sync or misinformed. Organisations spend time re-qualifying, re-explaining and re-framing. The website becomes a reverse filter: it attracts prospects who are not really aligned with the real offer.
Generative AI can be a formidable accelerator But it can't define strategy, arbitrate between coherence and speed, decide what needs to be said, what needs to be kept quiet, what makes an organisation different. But it cannot define a strategy, arbitrate between consistency and speed, decide what deserves to be said, what needs to be kept quiet, what makes an organisation different. If you choose to create a 100% website using AI, you need to bear in mind the limits and consequences that this implies.