WordPress just created an official AI team with contributors from Google and Automattic to drive platform-wide artificial intelligence projects. Taking a "plugin-first" playbook from its performance team, the group plans to iterate quickly with canonical plugins without waiting for slow Core release cycles. Why it matters: It keeps the web's biggest CMS unified and open as AI shifts online creation.
Automattic just acquired WPAI, the startup behind WordPress AI tools like CodeWP and AgentWP. The standalone apps will be sunsetted and folded directly into Automattic's core platform, with WPAI's founders joining to lead its AI roadmap. Why it matters: It marks Automattic's second acquisition in two months, signaling a major push to make AI coding and site management a native part of WordPress.
Automattic just rolled out Write Brief with AI, a new built-in assistant for WordPress.com aimed at making blog posts crisper and easier to read. The tool scores your drafts across sentence length, complexity, and confidence, offering one-click suggestions to trim wordy phrases. It is currently available as a free beta for English content.
Automattic is reportedly finalizing deals with OpenAI and Midjourney to feed user posts from Tumblr and WordPress.com into their AI models. An internal scrape reportedly scooped up a decade of posts, including some private content by mistake, prompting Automattic to promise a quick opt-out toggle. Why it matters: Platforms are desperate to cash in on user data, even at the cost of alienating the creative communities that built them.
Jetpack just rolled out an AI Assistant directly inside the WordPress block editor. Powered by generative AI, it handles drafting posts, building tables, adjusting tone, and translating across 12 languages on command. Users get 20 free requests before the $10 monthly subscription kicks in, giving millions of bloggers native AI writing tools without tab-switching.
