WordPress contributors are currently engaged in discussions about how AI might be integrated into the WordPress ecosystem, debating whether it should be incorporated in the core or remain as a plugin.
At present, there are no plans to add AI to the WordPress core. These discussions are in their initial stages, effectively illuminating the potential paths for AI integration.
Several contributors have shared their viewpoints, marking some significant initial points in these early discussions.
Plugin or Core Integration
It was widely agreed upon that AI integration might be best accomplished through external plugins rather than embedding it into the WordPress core itself.
Matt Cromwell highlighted concerns about the breadth of existing WordPress projects that need to be finished, suggesting that adding AI might divert focus from these projects. Nonetheless, he acknowledged that discussing AI is a prudent step at this juncture.
He wrote:
“At what cost would the project chase an AI integration?
…I find it hard to imagine pursuing the current roadmap with excellence and stability AND adding a huge AI integration as well.
…being that all AI options currently require integration with a 3rd party system, some sort of pricing and authentication, this feels to me to clearly be plugin territory.
It’s a fun exercise to dream about what an AI-powered WordPress would look like, but at this infancy-stage of AI I think it’s better to let the plugin ecosystem do the innovating so that Core can focus on its more foundational features that need improving…”
Diagnostic AI Co-pilot
Ollie Jones proposed a compelling use of AI for maintaining a WordPress site. They suggested integrating AI as a diagnostic co-pilot to identify problems, such as plugin conflicts, and offer solutions.
Ollie wrote:
“HERE’S the AI feature I want to see: Feed tracebacks and error messages to the AI, then say ‘Hey AI, what went wrong here? Suggest some ways to fix the problem.’
If this worked even minimally in the “what went wrong” question, WordPress people will love it.”
This idea is appealing, especially if an AI could detect conflicts between plugins and take steps to maintain the site’s stability while notifying users of the issue.
AI WordPress Team Member
Another contributor, robglidden, envisioned AI as a participant in collaborative teams. This aligns with Phase 3 of WordPress’s plan to modernize with Gutenberg, which focuses on collaboration.
WordPress is currently in phase two of four planned phases, with the third phase focusing on real-time and asynchronous collaboration, as well as publishing workflows.
Examples of Phase 3 focuses:
- Real-time collaboration: Creating the UI and infrastructure to accommodate multiple team members customizing a website simultaneously.
- Asynchronous collaboration: The ability to share drafts, comments, and annotations.
- Publishing flows: Incorporating editorial features like steps, goals, and prerequisites in the content creation workflow.
robglidden wrote:
“I would suggest looking at AI chatbots as (“just another”) user type in the upcoming Phase 3 of collaboration/workflow.
I for one want an AI chatbot on my multiuser collaboration team in a phase 3 WordPress.
In the multiuser collaborative workflows already described in ‘Phase 3 Collaboration’ it seems like basically the same infrastructure should work for both human users and AI ‘users’.
Indeed, it is not a huge stretch in reading that document to think of ‘users’, ‘collaborators’, and ‘creators’ as also being bot-ish users, assigned and performing tasks within a workflow…”
AI is Already Integrated with WordPress
James LePage, founder of an AI SaaS company called CodeWP, noted that AI integration is already happening within WordPress through third-party plugins. CodeWP offers an AI Code Generator plugin specific for WordPress development, capable of generating code for PHP, JavaScript, and WooCommerce.
James wrote:
“It seems like solid plugin territory to me; 1 – AI will always require compute, meaning 3rd party services, and I think that already moves it out of the core scope and 2 – we don’t really need anything special to integrate AI.
I’m the founder of one of the only AI SaaS offerings for WP, and we’re building a plugin to help integrate our service with individual sites.
We’re also collaborating with existing code snippet plugins.
There’s nothing that we really need from Core to help with this plugin, and we can add all of the features we need by leveraging existing features/functions.”
James highlighted that several AI integrations are already present in the WordPress ecosystem, including SEO and content optimization plugins like Rank Math, SEOPress, and AIOSEO, all of which utilize AI in various ways.
WordPress Keeping Up With AI
It is promising to see WordPress exploring how to leverage AI to continue evolving and avoid falling behind. While this is just the beginning of the conversation, it mirrors how other advancements, such as the WordPress Performance Team, started with similar discussions.
What kinds of AI integration would you like to see in WordPress?
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Let’s talk: WordPress Core & Artificial Intelligence
