Fake AI Vs. Real AI: How To Know The Difference

Less than 10 years ago, AI has been already becoming a buzz-word. Many companies claimed to use AI in their tech products. Filip Borcov recalls a presentation by Wix he attended in 2017 in Klaipeda. Wix presented their website builder called Wix ADI.

At that time, Wix was marketing having AI (ADI). At that time, even something as simple as T9 was considered AI. But now, in the era when LLM are everywhere, most SaaS products are marketed as AI-powered. It begs the question — is there a difference between “AI” and “AI-powered”?

What Real AI Is

There are many academic definitions of AI. Here, the definition is aligned with the field of computational creativity. AI is a system capable of performing creative work.

This goes beyond technical operations, like calculators, and includes tasks such as image generation and writing original text, i.e., producing results where there isn’t a single correct variant. If you gave the same task to multiple people, each one would come up with a unique solution.

If a system can perform such tasks, it can be called real AI.

Why Not Everything Labeled 'AI' Is AI

Many products positioned as AI may appear intelligent to non-technical users.

In reality, the major surge of real AI adoption occurred just recently, driven largely by the public release of advanced models by OpenAI in late 2022, such as ChatGPT, which accelerated worldwide interest in actual generative AI.

Right now, AI models are more advanced than ever. A lot of SaaS products, including ERPs and website builders, claim to have implemented AI. But do these systems truly use AI or just use AI as a marketing label?

Two Types Of AI In Modern Products

Partial AI Implementation

In these systems, AI is not the core of the product. It assists it, but does not drive it. Examples include AI-powered search, spelling correction, text generation and voice recognition in some product modules (but not in the core).

It cannot be called “fake AI”—the technology is used and it does utilize machine learning. So it’s not a lie when marketers choose to label their promoted product AI, even if it is simply an add-on.

There is a reason why AI has become one of the biggest buzzwords: It sells well. Customers and businesses are used to AI functionality, and, when there is a choice, they are more likely to prefer AI-powered products.

We noticed a similar pattern during our A/B testing at Site.pro When we added an “AI Website Builder” header to our homepage instead of a regular “Website Builder” headline, conversion rates doubled. This demonstrates strong consumer demand and the commercial incentive to label products as AI-enhanced.

AI features are being added everywhere: banking apps, ERP systems, productivity tools, creative software and more.

Full AI Implementation

Fully AI products are those whose primary purpose can be fulfilled by AI. Let’s consider an analogy.

Imagine there are two cars:

Similarly, in software, AI can be either a core function or an add-on (a secondary feature). Invoice recognition or spellchecking are helpful but not transformational unless it’s the only function of a product.

AI Website Builders: Where They Stand

The primary goal of website builders is to create websites. If AI fully accomplishes this—based on user prompts or voice commands—then the product can be legitimately called an AI website builder.

Examples of what true AI website building include:

By contrast, image generation or text creation—while useful—do not fulfill the core mission of website builders.

Understanding Fake AI

The third type of “AI” implementation doesn't actually use machine learning. There are plenty of programs based on algorithms that can appear like AI, but in reality, have nothing to do with it.

Old-school automation scripts work this way. It seems like they are responding to your unique query, but in reality, no matter how many times you ask, they will produce the same answer. Stable algorithms don’t learn as an LLM does, and they can’t do creative work or improve over time.

These deterministic systems used to be marketed as AI, but such cases are increasingly rare because LLMs have become more accessible.

Determining Whether Full AI Implementation Is Worth It

As AI becomes integrated into different aspects of our lives, real LLMs appear in more products, both as a feature and a core function.

AI has a key advantage: Unlike traditional software, it improves and produces new outputs as it is trained on more data. There are, however, costs for this, both for business and customers.

Original publication: 2026-03-26 Fake AI Vs. Real AI: How To Know The Difference And Avoid Falling For False Advertising