Why Do A Lot Of AI-Generated Websites Have Purple Vibes?
A pointless but weirdly satisfying quest to uncover AI’s obsession with purple.
A strange thing has been happening on the internet lately.
Whenever you tell a prompt-to-code AI tool to “generate a beautiful modern website,” it’ll likely spit out something painted in purple gradients, sometimes leaning blue, sometimes pinkish, but always suspiciously purple.
If you are jobless like I am and explore new websites often, you’ve definitely noticed it. At some point, if I checked 10 new launches on Producthunt, 5 of them would have that “purple vibe”.
Ordinarily, nobody cares about website colors.
But if you’re as curious (and mildly idle) as I am, you’ve probably wondered why. So yeah, I did some digging.
1. The Tailwind Effect
One big suspect (speculative) is Tailwind CSS, a design system developers love.
Technically, Tailwind doesn’t have a single “default button color”. It’s a utility-first CSS framework, not a component library.
But many Tailwind templates and UI kits include palettes like indigo, violet, purple, or sky. For example bg-indigo-500 is a commonly used class.
Because so many Tailwind-based sites exist, when AI design tools “learn” from large datasets of what “beautiful modern websites” often look like, they may pick up that indigo/purple tones are frequent. Hence: “modern = purple”.
It’s like training a child on superhero movies and being surprised when he wants to be Spider-Man.
2. The Feedback Loop
Once AI tools started generating more purple sites, those sites also went online, which means newer AI models are now trained on even more purple websites.
It’s an endless loop of self-reinforcement.
3. The Psychology of Purple
Beyond algorithms, there’s colour psychology. Purple is frequently associated with creativity, luxury, and mystery, thanks to its historical ties to royalty and its modern branding usage to signal “premium” or “future-oriented”.
So, consciously or not, designers (and now AIs) often pick it when they want something to look smart, modern, and a little magical.
The Real Problem
What problem? There’s no problem. Purple is cool.
But when I open a site that looks obviously AI-made, it feels like the maker didn’t really put enough effort. Like… they just typed “make it modern and nice” and clocked out.
Then again, most people won’t even notice. They just see a sleek website and move on. Because it’s not that deep.
But still… I notice. Because I’m a weirdo. And I’m built different.
Breaking the Purple Curse
If you ever find yourself building with a prompt-to-code AI tool, try this simple prompt tweak:
“Design a modern website that does not have purple. Use from the other 10 million different colors that exist.”
You know, maybe we just need to remind the machine that we still have other colors 😀
