WordPress Adds AI Assistant That Can Outperform a Co-Editor

WordPress.com, the managed hosting platform from Automattic, announced on Tuesday the launch of a built-in AI assistant designed to work directly inside the site editor. The assistant can adjust layouts, update styles, edit content, and generate or modify images, all through natural-language prompts that users type as they work. It is an expansion of WordPress’s existing AI website builder, which previously handled one-off site creation but did not persist as an ongoing editing tool. The assistant is available to sites on Business and Commerce plans at no additional cost. For customers who used the AI website builder to create their site, the assistant is enabled by default. Others can activate it manually by navigating to site settings, locating the “AI tools” section, and toggling the feature on. Users can issue broad instructions like, “make this section feel more modern or spacious,” “change my site’s colors to be brighter and bolder,” or “give me more font options that feel clean and professional.” The assistant will make the changes reflected in real time as it updates the design. These prompts do not require precise technical language. The assistant is built to understand the site’s content and layout, allowing it to interpret general requests and apply them appropriately. The assistant can also add or adjust structural elements. Users can instruct it to “add a contact page” or “add a testimonials section below this section,” and the assistant will handle the layout changes without requiring manual block dragging. However, the feature works with block themes only. Sites using classic themes will not see the assistant appear in the editor, limiting its functionality to image-related tasks only. Content Editing and Image Generation The AI assistant can also function as an editor. Users can request that it rewrite content to sound more confident, translate sections into other languages, suggest stronger headlines, or fact-check material. This capability is integrated into the block notes editor that arrived in WordPress 6.9, which allows teams to collaborate within the editor. By typing @ai followed by a request, users can pull the assistant into that workflow. The assistant will provide answers inline, including relevant links and citations when it draws from external sources. This integration eliminates the context-switching that typically fragments creative work. Writers no longer need to jump between their editor, search engines for fact-checking, and translation tools. Everything happens within a single, unified interface. For image creation and editing, the assistant connects with Google Gemini’s Nano Banana AI models. A new “Generate Image” button in the Media Library allows users to specify requirements such as aspect ratios or image styles. Users can describe what they want in plain language, and the assistant will produce a new image based on that description. Existing images can also be modified. For example, converting an image to black and white or replacing elements within a photo, such as swapping pancakes for waffles in a breakfast image. Automattic has stated that some features rely on third-party AI providers, including OpenAI, but that OpenAI does not train its models on user input from WordPress. The image generation and editing, however, run specifically on Google Gemini rather than OpenAI. Competitive Positioning The launch puts WordPress in closer competition with AI-driven site builders such as Wix and Squarespace, both of which have added generative AI features over the past year. However, some AI site generators have drawn criticism for producing dated designs. CNET’s review of Wix’s AI site generator flagged this issue. This leaves room for WordPress to compete on design quality if its assistant produces more current and polished outputs. The assistant also raises the stakes for third-party WordPress plugins that sell similar AI tools. By building these capabilities natively into the platform and offering them at no additional cost to Business and Commerce plan users, Automattic is effectively making certain plugin functionality redundant. Third-party developers will need to offer capabilities that go beyond what the built-in assistant provides in order to justify their continued value. The current assistant focuses on generative AI that responds to direct prompts. However, the broader industry shift is moving toward “agentic” AI, which handles multi-step tasks autonomously. Examples include repairing broken links across an entire site, rebuilding pages based on performance data such as click or scroll behavior, or optimizing content structure without requiring explicit instructions for each change.

WordPress Adds AI Assistant That Can Outperform a Co-Editor

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