Artificial Intelligence has already arrived in WordPress in a modular way, through various plugins forming the foundation for integrating AI-based features.
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Program transcript
Hello, I’m Alicia Ireland, and you’re listening to WPpodcast, bringing the weekly news from the WordPress Community.
In this episode, you’ll find the information from July 14th to 20th, 2025.
Just a few weeks ago, the WordPress Artificial Intelligence team was launched, and the first results are already here: several experimental plugins featuring different functionalities and capabilities to assist with plugin development or interaction with other artificial intelligence tools.
To ensure flexibility and avoid vendor lock-in or premature standardization, these projects are distributed as canonical plugins and Composer packages independent of WordPress Core. This allows developers to integrate them into production before an eventual merger into Core. This strategy aligns with Phase 3 of Gutenberg’s roadmap—Collaboration—which anticipates integrating AI agents into the new Site Admin interface, enabling real-time and asynchronous collaboration within the editor, and introducing AI-driven features into the Media Library. The goal is that by WordPress 7.0, any user can access, utilize, and build advanced AI features that will eventually make their way into Core.
The AI Experiments plugin brings together components from WordPress’s AI Building Blocks initiative into a tangible application that demonstrates how these pieces work together to provide AI functionality directly in the editor and admin panel. Using this tool, any user can connect their preferred AI provider, switch seamlessly between models, and experiment with content generation and task automation, creating a real-world environment to explore current AI possibilities.
Beyond mere demonstration, the AI Experiments plugin sets a roadmap toward the future of WordPress, exploring advanced use-cases such as conversational assistants for site management, real-time collaboration in Gutenberg, asynchronous commenting with AI suggestions, and intelligent organization of the Media Library, anticipating their eventual integration into Core.
The PHP AI Client SDK is the central component of this initiative, aiming to unify and simplify the integration of artificial intelligence features in PHP projects and WordPress plugins. Thanks to its provider-agnostic interface, developers only need to specify which AI capabilities they wish to integrate, while administrators manage API credentials from a single point, avoiding vendor lock-in and redundant infrastructure across extensions. Additionally, the SDK internally manages various streaming protocols, API formats, and service-specific details, enabling tasks from simple text generation to complex multimodal operations, all without exposing the underlying complexity to end users.
The Abilities API is another fundamental component of the initiative, designed to provide the ecosystem with a common language to describe, register, and consistently expose all the functionalities offered by various plugins and themes. Through a centralized registry, each component can declare its capabilities with clearly defined input and output schemas, status messages, and associated permissions. This allows developers and AI systems alike to discover and orchestrate these functions without depending on scattered and heterogeneous implementations. It solves fragmentation issues, such as an assistant not knowing if a backup plugin can create snapshots or if an SEO extension can analyze content, and it opens the door to advanced use-cases, from command palettes and automated workflows to integrating capabilities into editor menus and toolbars.
The MCP Adapter is also part of the initiative, based on the open Model Context Protocol (MCP), which standardizes the way applications provide context to language models (LLMs).
In this implementation, WordPress acts both as an MCP server—exposing capabilities registered through the Abilities API so AI assistants can discover and execute actions like creating posts, managing media, or moderating comments—and as an MCP client, connecting to external servers via an integrated agent, REST API, or WP-CLI. This facilitates conversational workflows that integrate specialized services for content generation, data analysis, or site migration.
Collectively, these AI Building Blocks initiatives offer a modular and comprehensive infrastructure for bringing artificial intelligence to WordPress.
In other updates, Gutenberg 21.2 introduces several new features, including enhancements to the Navigation block, which now includes a sidebar toggle to set links to open in new tabs without editing code or using external workarounds.
DataViews have been improved with new field type definitions (media, boolean, email, and array), the ability to assign default sorting and rendering functions, and independent exports of their subcomponents to create custom compositions. Additionally, it introduces two calendar components—DateCalendar and DateRangeCalendar—to simplify date selection.
Lastly, modernization of settings panels continues: the Gallery block receives a redesigned interface for tools, and the Site Logo block completes its transition to the new UI, concluding this refactoring phase.
The Core team has revived an eight-year-old discussion about fully including the PHPMailer library. Currently, WordPress uses a partial version, but full inclusion would enable native mail management features, meaning SMTP plugins would no longer need to bundle potentially insecure versions.
The Community team has launched three strategic initiatives to consolidate WordPress’s presence in education: Campus Connect, Student Clubs, and WordPress Credits.
Campus Connect proposes intensive workshops and practical events where students learn how to create websites, improve SEO, and explore professional opportunities within the WordPress ecosystem, supported by mentors and industry professionals.
The Student Clubs function as autonomous campus communities, maintaining ongoing interest through regular meetings and recurrent projects, ensuring educational momentum doesn’t fade after a single event.
Finally, the WordPress Credits program integrates students into real WordPress development projects, granting formal academic recognition. This approach removes entry barriers, allowing students to gain practical experience contributing directly to Core and enhancing platform accessibility.
And finally, this podcast is distributed under a Creative Commons license as a derivative version of the podcast in Spanish; you can find all the links for more information, and the podcast in other languages, at WPpodcast .org.
Thanks for listening, and until the next episode!
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