Typeface Trouble: Why a Simple Font Choice Can Get Creators Accused of Using AI

Independent author T.M. Kirk recently found herself defending her work against accusations of using artificial intelligence — not because of her words, but because of the font she used in an online post. Writing on Instagram, Kirk said the post carried no AI flag, yet commenters still blamed her for making it look as though it had been machine-generated.

Her experience reflects a broader shift in how audiences judge creative work. Tools such as ChatGPT and Claude have made it faster and cheaper to produce graphics and other content, prompting calls to boycott businesses that critics say rely on low-quality “AI slop” in their advertising. As readers search for telltale signs, familiar design choices are increasingly treated with the same suspicion as obvious errors, such as garbled text or hands with extra fingers.

Part of the confusion stems from how image generators handle lettering. When AI renders text as part of a picture, it builds the letters pixel by pixel, and the results often echo common styles found in ads, posters and banners in its training data. Small inconsistencies in spacing or letter shapes can leave the text looking uneven, even when it closely resembles a familiar typeface.

Some AI-generated lettering has been compared to Inter, while slanted brush lettering seen in dramatic ads and flyers has drawn comparisons to Road Rage. Designer Ramin Nasibov highlighted the brush style in a November 2 post that rendered the words “Comic Sans” in similar lettering. Because human designers can choose exactly the same style, the lettering alone reveals little about how an image was actually made.

The scrutiny once reserved for em dashes and words such as “delve” has now extended to typography. Some writers say they use more casual language, deliberately leave in typos or avoid certain words and punctuation, while artists share early sketches, saved layers and recorded time-lapse videos to document their process — even though AI can now imitate time-lapse footage as well.

Some designers preemptively avoid typefaces that readers associate with AI. As image generators improve at rendering clean, consistent lettering, those visual clues are likely to become less reliable. The stigma attached to particular fonts, however, may linger longer, leaving small creators and self-published authors to field questions about perfectly ordinary design decisions.