AI

The AI plugin adds opt-in AI tools to the WordPress admin and Block Editor. It’s built by the WordPress Core AI team for site owners, content creators, and developers who want to try AI in WordPress early and help shape what comes next.

Features and Experiments

Nothing is turned on when you activate the plugin. You choose what to enable in Settings -> AI, and each item there is one of two kinds:

• Feature – Stable and supported. Changes avoid breaking existing behavior. Image Generation and Editing is currently the only Feature.
• Experiment – Early-stage and actively being developed. Experiments may change significantly or be removed in any release, so we recommend trying them on a staging site before using them on a live site.

Once enabled, most Experiments only send a request to your AI provider when you click a button, but some run on their own. Comment Moderation, for example, checks every new comment, including comments from site visitors. In Settings -> AI, Experiments that run on their own are marked “Runs automatically”, and the info icon next to each item’s name shows when it runs, what it sends to your AI provider, and how many requests it makes.

Read the Feature and Experiment Lifecycle to learn how Experiments are evaluated and how they can become Features.

Before You Start

• This plugin is not part of WordPress core. It does nothing until you install and activate it, and each Feature or Experiment stays off until you enable it.
• You need an AI Connector plugin and an account with an AI provider. The AI plugin doesn’t include provider credentials. Install a connector plugin such as Anthropic, Google, or OpenAI (more connectors), then add your API key in Settings -> Connectors.
• Your AI provider bills you for usage. The plugin is free; each AI request is billed by your provider under your account.
• The Block Editor is required. The Classic Editor and other editing experiences are not supported.

New to WordPress AI? Take the AI-Powered WordPress course to learn how to configure the plugin, use its features, and understand the building blocks behind them. The Getting Started guide covers setup and troubleshooting.

Feature

• Image Generation and Editing – Create and edit images from post content in the editor, and from the Media Library.

Experiments

Experiments marked “runs automatically” do their work without you clicking anything once they’re enabled. Most of them send requests to your AI provider when they run.

• Abilities Explorer – Browse and test registered AI abilities from a dedicated admin screen.
• AI Request Logging – Logs AI requests, including short previews of prompts and responses, for observability and debugging.
• Alt Text Generation – Generate descriptive alt text for images to improve accessibility.
• Block Container Label Generation – Generates short List View labels for Group, Columns, and other container blocks.
• Comment Moderation (runs automatically) – Checks each new comment for toxicity and sentiment, gives it a value score, and can hold comments for moderation. Includes comments from site visitors by default.
• Connector Approval – Require administrator approval before other plugins or themes can use the AI connectors configured on this site.
• Content Classification – Suggests relevant tags and categories to organize content.
• Content Resizing – Shorten, expand, or rephrase selected block content.
• Content Summarization – Summarizes long-form content into digestible overviews.
• Content Translation – Translates paragraph and heading blocks, and optionally the post title, into a selected language from the post editor.
• Content Verification (runs automatically) – Detects C2PA Content Credentials in uploaded images and stores them alongside the attachment.
• Custom Abilities – Makes the plugin’s general-purpose WordPress Abilities available through the Abilities API and MCP.
• Editorial Notes – Reviews post content block-by-block and adds Notes with suggestions for Accessibility, Readability, Grammar, and SEO.
• Editorial Updates – Applies pending editorial Notes to your content and saves the post, without a preview.
• Excerpt Generation – Generates excerpt suggestions for your posts.
• Key Encryption – Encrypts AI provider API keys stored in your database. Disabling the experiment or deactivating the plugin restores plaintext keys.
• Markdown Feeds – Publishes a Markdown feed and Markdown versions of your public posts and pages for AI agents and other machine readers.
• MCP Access – Controls which abilities AI agents can use over the Model Context Protocol (MCP). Installs and activates the MCP Adapter plugin when enabled.
• Meta Description Generation – Generates meta description suggestions and integrates them with several SEO plugins.
• Revision Change Summary – Summarizes what changed between two revisions of a post in plain language, on the visual and classic revisions screens.
• Slug Generation – Suggests SEO-friendly permalink slugs from the permalink popover or the pre-publish panel.
• Suggest Reply – Adds a “Suggest Reply” action to the Comments screen and Activity widget to draft replies to comments.
• Text to Speech – Generates an audio version of a post that visitors can listen to instead of reading.
• Title Generation – Generates title suggestions for your posts.
• Type-ahead Text (runs automatically) – Suggests text as you type in the Block Editor.
• WebMCP – Lets an agent browser work in the Block Editor through WebMCP, with every change visible on the page as it happens.

Coming Soon

We’re actively developing new features to enhance your WordPress workflow:

• AI Playground – Experiment with different AI models and providers.
• Content Assistant – AI-powered writing and editing in Gutenberg.
• Site Agent – Natural language WordPress administration.
• Workflow Automation – AI-driven task automation.

Roadmap

You can view the active plugin roadmap in a filtered view in the WordPress AI GitHub Project Board.

For Developers

The AI plugin is designed to be studied, extended, and built upon. Whether you’re a plugin developer, agency, or hosting provider, here’s what you can do:

Under the Hood:

These building blocks power the Features and Experiments above. They aren’t settings you turn on or off.

• AI Building Blocks – Combines the PHP AI Client and Abilities API into one plugin, as a reference implementation for developers.
• Dashboard Widgets – AI Status and AI Capabilities widgets, plus a framework for registering new ones.
• Experiment Framework – The opt-in system that registers each Feature and Experiment and its toggle.
• Guidelines – Lets abilities respect site-wide editorial standards.
• Multi-Provider Support – Works with AI Connector plugins for providers such as OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic.

Extend the Plugin:

• Build Custom Experiments – Use the Abstract_Feature base class to create your own AI-powered features.
• Pre-configure Providers – Hosts and agencies can set up AI Connector plugins so users don’t need their own API keys.
• Register Custom Abilities – Hook into the Abilities API to add new AI capabilities.
• Override Default Behavior – Use filters to customize prompts, responses, and UI elements.
• Comprehensive Hooks – Filters and actions throughout the codebase for customization.

Developer Tools Coming Soon:

• AI Playground – Experiment with different AI models and prompts.
• MCP (Model Context Protocol) – Integrate and test Model Context Protocol capabilities in WordPress workflows.
• Extended Providers – Support for experimenting with additional or alternate AI providers.

Get Started:

1. Read the Contributing Guide for development setup
2. Join the conversation in #core-ai on WordPress Slack
3. Browse the GitHub repository to see how experiments are built
4. Participate in discussions on how best the plugin should iterate.

We welcome contributions! Whether you want to build new experiments, improve existing features, or help with documentation, check out our GitHub repository to get involved.