Can AI do ugly?

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This week, some thoughts on AI aesthetics, the challenge of uninsurability, and how to pitch a biotech startup to non-experts. — Anna

Too good to be true

Most tools claiming to detect AI-generated text fail spectacularly, my colleague Kyle Wiggers reported. That’s a paradox. I’m only human, but a lot of the AI-written pitches I receive don’t pass the sniff test yet; their style and wordiness feel off.

Then again, it is probably too early to expect machines to detect a je ne sais quoi, even if we can see it. As fellow TechCrunch writer Ron Miller observed recently, “it’s really like AI-generated art, which has a certain look and feel.”

That look and feel was made funnily obvious in a recent experiment conducted on one of my favorite social media accounts, Ugly Belgian Houses.