Trump's plan to redesign every .gov website leads to AI-designed horrors
Under the Trump administration, a plan to redesign all .gov websites using AI has resulted in poorly designed and controversial pages, drawing criticism for their appearance and functionality.
Background
- The article refers to a (fictional, future-dated) executive order from Donald Trump requiring all US federal government websites to be redesigned using AI tools, cutting out human designers and accessibility experts.
- It satirizes the real-world push by Trump and allies to shrink the federal workforce and replace government services with AI and private-sector efficiency — a stance often associated with the "Department of Government Efficiency" (DOGE) concept floated during his transition planning.
- The "horrors" are deliberately absurd, unusable AI-generated website mockups that violate federal accessibility (Section 508) standards, ignore plain-language rules, and mix official content with hallucinated misinformation.
- Key context: US law requires .gov sites to be accessible to people with disabilities; AI image- and text-generators are known to produce output that looks plausible but contains errors or biases. The piece mocks the idea that cost-cutting via AI can replace professional, human-centered design.