AI-generated polish has become noise. Nielsen Norman Group argues that handmade design is now a trust signal, because when anyone can produce a sleek visual in minutes, visual quality stops indicating human effort or care.
The mechanism is a familiar pendulum. Skeuomorphism gave way to flat design as a direct rejection of visual excess. Now flat and AI-polished aesthetics are the excess. Users buying vinyl, shooting on film, and reaching for wired headphones are the same users losing trust in interfaces that look generated rather than considered.
The full article is worth reading for how it connects this cultural shift to specific UX implications, not just aesthetic preference. The question it forces: if your design could have been made by a prompt, what signal does that send about whether anyone at your company actually thought about the user.
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