Yes, AI can build a website. Here is what you actually get
There are two quite different things behind the same promise. The first is a website builder’s own AI. Wix, for one, describes an AI site builder that asks about your business in a chat, generates a site, and then hands it to you in the Wix Editor, where you change it like any other Wix site. The AI is the start of the process; the editor and the hosting are the builder’s.
The second is a chat assistant, or an app-building tool, that writes the code for a site. Ask Claude or ChatGPT for a website for a florist and it will write the pages, often good-looking ones, as code. What you then hold is a set of files. There is no editing screen unless one was built, no hosting unless you arrange it, and no record of why each part works the way it does.
Neither is a trick. The difference matters because almost everything below depends on which of the two you have, and the advert seldom says.
Who changes the words next month?
A business website is never finished. Prices change, a member of staff leaves, the shop closes for a week in February. On a builder, you log in and type. On a site that is only code, the words live inside the code, so each change means asking the AI again, or opening the files yourself.
Asking again sounds easy, and for one change it often is. The trouble is that a conversation does not remember the site the way an editor does. Ask for new opening hours and you may get a page that also has a different heading, a moved button or a missing section, because the tool wrote the page afresh rather than changing one line. Someone has to compare the old page with the new one, every time.
An invented example: a florist in Machynlleth gets a site from an assistant in an afternoon, and it looks lovely. In March the shop needs to add Mother’s Day collection times. Without an editor, the choice is between pasting the whole page back into a chat and hoping, or paying someone to find the right line. Neither is what the advert showed.
Where does it live, and who holds the keys?
A website needs three things beyond its pages: somewhere to run, an address, and the accounts that control both. A site generated in a chat has none of these until someone sets them up. An app-building tool may host it for you; whether your own domain, a copy of the files and the hosting itself come with your plan is in its current terms, so read those rather than an article about them.
Ask who owns each part. Is the domain registered in your name, with a login you hold? If the tool hosts the site, can you take the files and run them somewhere else, and would they work there? Is the account that publishes the site yours, or the person’s who set it up? A site you cannot move is rented, however it was built.
Write the answers down where the next person can find them. The commonest problem with a quick build is not the code; it is that nobody remembers which account it lives in.
- The domain is registered in the business’s name
- You hold the login for the hosting, not only the builder of the site
- You have a copy of the site’s files, or know how to get one
- You know what it costs each month, and what happens if you stop paying
When it breaks, who fixes it?
Things break on every website: a form stops sending, a page looks wrong on a new phone, a service the site depends on changes. On a builder, that is mostly the builder’s problem. On generated code, it is yours.
Fixing code you did not write, and have not read, is hard even for a developer. Fixing it by asking the tool that wrote it is possible, but the tool has to be told what is wrong, often cannot see the live site, and may change other things while it fixes one. A small fault can turn into a long evening, or into starting again.
This is the cost the adverts leave out, and the UK’s advertising regulator has noticed the wider pattern. The ASA has told advertisers not to claim more than their AI can do. An advert can be true about the first hour and still leave out everything after it.
Before you rely on it. Ask one question of any tool or provider, including us: if the contact form stops working on a Saturday, what do I do, and who do I ask?
What to check before it goes live
Some faults do not show on screen. In a 2024 study, developers asked ChatGPT for websites without mentioning accessibility, and most of the sites it produced had accessibility faults when checked against WCAG 2.2; when asked to fix them, it corrected many. The lesson is to ask, then check: say in the request that the site must meet WCAG 2.2 at level AA, and have a person test it with a keyboard and a screen reader.
Check that the words are in the page itself, not only drawn on screen by a script, because anything that reads the page without running its scripts would find nothing there. Open the page, view its source, and search for a sentence you can see. If it is not there, ask the tool to fix it. The free assessment on this site does the same check and names what it finds.
If you work in two languages, one prompt gives you one. A Welsh version produced in the same breath needs a fluent person to read it before it goes live, just as Wix’s own help asks you to check and edit the text its AI writes. A wrong price or a clumsy sentence costs more in Welsh, because the reader notices.
None of this means a generated site is a bad idea. For a one-page site, a test of an idea, or a starting point a developer will take over, it can be exactly right. It is the second day that needs a plan.
- You know whether you have an editor or only code
- Someone can change the words without rewriting the page
- The domain, hosting and files are in your name
- Someone you can reach will fix it when it breaks
- It has been tested with a keyboard and a screen reader
- A fluent person has read the Welsh
Frequently asked questions
Can I build my business website with ChatGPT or Claude?
You can get the code for one, often quickly and often good-looking. You then need somewhere to host it, an address, a way to change the words, and someone to fix it when it breaks. Plan those before you rely on it.
Is an AI website builder the same as asking a chatbot for a website?
No. A builder such as Wix uses AI to start a site and then gives you its own editor and hosting. A chat assistant writes code, and leaves editing, hosting and fixing to you.
What happens if my AI-built website breaks?
On a builder, the builder looks after the platform and you change the content. On generated code, you or someone you pay has to find the fault in code nobody wrote by hand, or ask the AI to fix it and check it changed nothing else.
Do I own a website an AI tool built for me?
Check three things: the domain is registered in your name, you hold the hosting login, and you can get a copy of the files that would work elsewhere. The tool’s terms say the rest; read its current ones.