WordPress and AI #wpstuff

TLDR;

There both is and is not a conversation to be had about AI and WordPress.

Question: As a WordPress user, should I be attempting to integrate AI with my WordPress website or workflow?

Answer: Sure, if you want.

Recently, I was asked about incorporating information and education about AI tools into my LinkedIn Learning courses. As the AI craze becomes more and more pervasive, folks are curious about integrating new tech. I get that. Right now, things like ChatGPT and generative AI tools are not "officially" being integrated into WordPress development at the high level. Like, the people who make WordPress aren't using AI for that, or making it a part of the core software. Any type of changes to the way WordPress works and is built take a long time to be agreed upon and take root. So a very fast-moving fad-like thing like AI won't revolutionize WordPress overnight.

AI can act as a companion, but not necessarily a core part of WordPress. Theoretically, one could use AI when building, writing, designing, or testing a WordPress website. For example, if you need to write product descriptions for your e-commerce store, ChatGPT may come in handy for that. But there isn't necessarily a must-have AI companion tool for WordPress that your site will need to rely on. And your site won't automatically be worse off for not utilizing AI.

There are some very cool people out there building AI tools that are designed specially to work with WordPress. The grand majority of which are plugins. (https://wpaiuniverse.com/) However one needs to keep in mind that "WordPress" as we like to think of it did not create these tools. They're created by individuals and separate companies that have no association with Make WordPress or Automattic which is the company owned by the dude who co-founded WordPress in the first place and that creates a lot of software that is meant to pair with WordPress. (With the exception of something like the Jetpack AI Assistant, which is a popular but controversial Automattic product.)

Now what I can surmise from a site like WP AI Universe is that most companies are scrambling to develop products that bridge the AI and WordPress gap. There's interest and money to be made there. Good for them. And AI is meant to help us arrive at our goals more quickly and with less effort. So providing products geared toward that is great. But my reservations about the longevity of these tools and their reliability are fairly deep.

Back to my previous example: you want to use Chat GPT or a similar WordPress-oriented AI tool to write product descriptions for your store. If you don't have a plan or strategy for those descriptions, you'll end up with a sub-par product. If you don't have a keyword focus, AI won't create that for you. If you don't know the voice your brand needs to use, AI won't discover it for you. There is so very much about website design and UX that needs to be well thought out, humanized, and strategized in ways AI simply cannot do. It's important to know the difference between taking a short cut and cheating when it comes to developing content with AI.

I'm never going to sit here and tell anyone not to use AI. Or that you can't use AI with WordPress. But a lot of it right now is experimental, up in the air, unethical, and ineffective. So much of it is fun to experiment with, but not worth the gamble when it comes to the success for your business or the security of visitor data.

What do you think? Am I totally off base? Are there considerations I'm missing? Have you incorporated AI into your WordPress website to fantastic result? Share it with me!

Some extra reading:

• WordPress Contributors Discuss How Core Can Better Enable AI Innovation Conversation
• WordPress Artificial Intelligence