Digital Clones: Why Best Practices Are Killing Creativity #

I recently wrote about how online shops are losing their souls. Everything looks the same. Everything feels the same. The diagnosis was clear. Construction kits like Shopify or Wix dictate the structure. We lose the actual "experience" in a sea of technical uniformity.

To be honest, a new wave is coming our way right now. It won't solve this problem. It could make it much worse: Artificial Intelligence.

The Seductive Help of AI #

AI is a powerful tool. It helps us build layouts faster, predict conversion rates and find designs that "work." Anyone using Figma or Midjourney today can get inspiration or generate entire components in seconds. This promises efficiency. It promises "better" designs because they are data-driven.

But this is exactly where the fallacy lies.

The Average as the Ideal #

When we use AI to make design decisions, those decisions are based on data from the past. On what has already worked. The AI learns from existing inventory. If we ask it, "Create a design for a successful sneaker shop," it won't give us something radically new. It gives us the average of what statistically fails the least.

We are optimizing ourselves into absolute sameness.

The danger is real. The more we rely on tools to do the thinking for us, the more we switch off our own brains. Nobody wants to rack their brains over a bold new grid layout when the AI says the standard 3-column layout converts better.

The Feedback Loop of Boredom #

We risk seeing design as "painting by numbers," where the algorithm dictates the colors. If we stop allowing human imperfection, emotional breaks and "illogical" decisions, we lose exactly what makes brands stand out: character.

The more we use tools instead of our brains, the more identical things become. It's a feedback loop. The AI learns from our uniform shops. It proposes uniform designs to us. We build them. And the next AI learns from that again.

This loop does not stop on its own.

The Glimmer of Hope: How AI Can Actually Help Us Break Free #

There is another path. AI does not have to make us boring. It can help us be more unique, if we have the courage to use it correctly.

Instead of asking AI for the "best solution," which is just the most average one, we can use it to clear the path for real creativity.

  1. Automating the everyday: Let AI handle the tedious code, the resizing, and the technical implementation of Design Tokens. This frees up our human brains to focus fully on the feeling and the story of a shop.
  2. The "Anti-Pattern" Generator: We can use AI to brainstorm ideas that break the norm. Ask it: "What is the opposite of a standard e-commerce layout?" AI can be a sparring partner that pushes us out of our comfort zone instead of keeping us in it.

Conclusion #

At some point we may no longer be able to tell if there is a philosophy behind a brand or just a well-prompted algorithm. If everything is "best practice," nothing is special anymore.

Maybe we need to relearn how to be inefficient to stay relevant. Use AI to build the foundation. The soul of a brand still has to come from people.