Standing about a foot away from the screen, I would agree. I would also say the biggest issue is the lack of common design patterns in native Bubble elements. For example, this clickable sidebar that collapses (highlighted below). Things like this are hacky to build and require a lot of duct tape that a model like Sonnet 4.6 isn’t going to be able to replicate. Or something like a simple selector with 3 options. Extremely easy to do with regular AI, but impossible with Bubble’s AI because there’s no native “selector” element. You have to use a bunch of groups and conditionals to replicate that behavior.
Things the AI can’t do because Bubble itself can’t do them:
Collapsible Sidebar (would take at least an hour in Bubble):
Selector (simple common design pattern):
Toggle:
The list goes on. Drawers that open from the side of the screen, etc. Even for elements that currently exist, some are very weird and look 10 years old (the Slider element’s handlebars, for example). We only recently got a functional Table element, and I think before that the most recent one was the Multidropdown element. I’m not even sure the AI can create pages with these two elements, let alone the things I just discussed.
Essentially, the AI is only as strong as the underlying native elements, which are themselves inadequate. If a new user is going to come across all these limitations, they’re going to pick the slop builder over Bubble ever time. It ultimately doesn’t matter if Bubble can replicate a 2013-looking UI without the expected functionality of a modern-day app.