I think there’s a place for AI as a thinking tool and a learning support. Building a website in 2025 can be extraordinarily complicated and, while platforms like Neocities and Micro.Blog make this more approachable, there are still real barriers for someone who isn’t familiar with how the web works. I think this is also true of the indie web movement itself as there’s still a level of technical competency expected. It’s a privilege to have the access to the education, economic means, and cultural background that allows me to upskill myself for nothing more than the enjoyment of lifelong learning. If AI helps more people build their own websites and share their voice, I’m okay with that - so long as it is their voice (more on that below).
Full disclosure, I used AI to help me build my website. I asked it questions to help me understand how things work and how I should implement things. I find that it can be particularly helpful as a gateway to understanding topics I’m not familiar with or to check my reasoning. Yes, forums and sites like StackOverflow exist, but there is so much gatekeeping and oneupmanship in tech that it can be more discouraging than helpful.
A real example where AI was helpful to me was understanding server-side technologies. I’ve used PHP before but I’ve never administered a web server. Now that I’m running a VPS I found I’d opened a whole can of worms I wasn’t confident in my ability to handle on my own. I didn’t know what NGINX or SSL certificates were, or how to use Environment tokens and deploy my site based on git commits (or even how to use git reliably). Look at any hosting provider’s website and it’s a baffling array of terminology for the uninitiated.
More importantly I didn’t know what I didn’t know. It was AI that helped me not only get a feel for the technologies, it also pointed me in the direction of Laravel Forge. This affords me a layer of abstraction that I’m much more comfortable with to manage my server. Everything I learned through trial and error and talking to AI still applies. Forge just gives me a nice interface for dealing with it. I would not have found it on my own as I didn’t know the problem I was trying to solve.
Even using AI as a development tutor(?) like I do isn’t infallible. I lost a whole day trying to get Statamic multisite to run my various websites before finally discovering it’s not designed for that. The information is there - what the hell is a multi-tenant install?? - but it took me a long time to find it, despite AIs assurances that what I was trying to do was possible (FYI it’s intended for variations like multi-language setups of a single site). I also regularly question AIs conclusions when I know it’s wrong. I think critical thinking skills are important when working with AI. I really hope this becomes part of the curriculum for future generations. We need to bring our own knowledge and experience to these conversations, not just accepting AIs responses at face value.
However, to be clear, I didn’t ask AI to build my website. Aside from the Radical Edward smiley I ‘acquired’ from the Cowboy Bebop wiki and some 33x81 buttons, everything on my site was created by me, especially the crappy artwork in my galleries.
I’m against the use of generative AI to replace human creation such as writing, art and even web development. I don’t agree with stealing art (the aforementioned smiley I’d justify under “fair use” and I’m not trying to pass it off as my own. I do have a credits page somewhere I should probably link to though!) or trying to claim something was your work when it wasn’t.
Beyond that, as someone who gets a real thrill out of understanding how things work, I could never offload the actual creation to an AI. I might ask it to show me code snippets or explain how I might wire an application up, but I would never ask it to build the app for me. That would steal the enjoyment for me.
These AI powered tools that can build a web experience from a single prompt are a big topic at my organisation currently. I see the value in them as prototyping tools and I love the idea of allowing anyone to bring their ideas to life, especially if they’re not technical. However, I’m skeptical of these platforms ability to produce accessible experiences (I was particularly scathing of Figma’s own attempt when it launched).
I’m also concerned about how people will be able to maintain the apps they create without understanding how it works or ultimately involving a developer. I’m sure these companies would say that their tools don’t replace developers or good development practices, but that’s not what their marketing says. Many will see it as a quick fix and I think we will see a lot of abandonware as a result. That’s a version of the small web that I really don’t want to see.
There ultimately has to be a human involved for anything that is created for use by others, commercial or otherwise. At the very least, as a user I’d want to know if an app was built with AI so that I can weigh up whether I feel confident giving it my information or in its reliability as a service.
I am also concerned about the ethical and environmental implications of AI. I’m trying to be more intentional with my own prompts and also avoiding frivolous queries. However, the current speed at which AI usage is changing is worrying. It’s outpacing our ability to control it. It’s more worrying still when the AI advocate at a tech conference says the tech bros in Silicon Valley are hoping that they can burn through the planet now in the hopes of an AI solve to that same problem in the future🙃 I worry too about the masses. The people who don’t know or don’t care to know how AI does what it does. For every person like me who tries to be thoughtful with their usage - and kudos to those who don’t use it entirely - there will be masses who will reach for it daily to produce the next “package me up” trend🤢
Anyway, that was a longer response than I thought I’d write!
As an aside, I’m glad to see this discussion has been reframed as a broader question of AI and the small web. There’s a big difference between this question and opening an individual and their website to speculation and mockery (I’m not saying that was the original intent, just that the risk of dogpiling was there).
It’s encouraging to see that not only was the original post flagged, but that the reporter felt safe enough to identify themselves, and that the post author and respondents have accepted this feedback with understanding, pivoting to a constructive discussion. That’s the sign of a healthy community imho❤️