WordPress Developers Are Experimenting With Gutenberg-Native AI Block and Content Assistants

As more WordPress plugins for AI-generated content and images, chatbots, and assistants, are landing in the official directory, developers are beginning to explore even deeper integration with the block editor. Moving beyond the prototypical content generators that are cobbled together into a plugin, the tools developers are experimenting with today will provide a more deeply integrated experience that works seamlessly with the block editor as a natural extension of its capabilities.

Last week Human Made CTO Joe Hoyle published an early preview of generative AI natively integrated into the block editor with a video demonstrating prompts working across various blocks.

I’ve been working on a WordPress Gutenberg-native AI copilot. The results were pretty astounding to me once I got GPT to “speak Gutenberg” pic.twitter.com/adEfkPRHcb
— Joe Hoyle (@joe_hoyle) April 6, 2023

“Taking a native-first approach to integrating generative AI into WordPress, we’ve been experimenting with approaches to a ‘WordPress Copilot’ that can ‘speak’ Gutenberg / block-editor,” Hoyle said.

“Copy-pasting paragraphs between ChatGPT and WordPress only goes so far, while having the tools directly embedded in the editor for block layout generation, auto-linking, formatting, translation summarization and more open up a world of possibilities and productivity wins for content creators.”

Munir Kamal, WordPress developer and founder of Gutenberg Hub, has created a native AI writer with a similar UI to the tool Hoyle previewed, as they both were inspired by the Notion app. His preview video demonstrates far more capabilities than the earlier AI content generators for WordPress have implemented.

I've been working on a native AI writer inspired by Notion, designed to seamlessly integrate into #Gutenberg. Unlike clunky admin approached #AI plugins this will be your hidden Ai content assistant. Keep an eye out for it at the @GutenbergHub shop.#WordPress #chatgpt pic.twitter.com/WmCkJCpF0l
— Munir Kamal (@m_munirkamal) April 7, 2023

Kamal has tapped into the GPT API to add more options to the AI writer, including the ability to rewrite, improve the generated text, fix grammar, simplify language, make it shorter, make it longer, and translate. He plans to release it as a commercial plugin in his Gutenberg Hub shop when it’s ready.

“With the increasing advancements in AI technology, thanks to OpenAI for taking the leap, I believe it will become an even more integral part of blogging,” Kamal said when asked about AI and the future of blogging. “It can assist in generating ideas, improving grammar and structure, and even help with SEO optimization.

Hoyle is equally optimistic on the future of AI integrated into WordPress tools. It will be exciting to see if his Gutenberg-native AI copilot can be extended to blocks inside the Site Editor, to offer a text prompt-guided design experience without having to click through the tools.

“Going through this project has convinced me that LLMs [Large Language Model] have much more potential than I was giving them credit for,” Hoyle said. “It feels like there’s still a lot to discover what the models are capable of.

“As the availability to GPT-4 (and with it larger token limits) increases, we see a clear path of improvement to what we’ve shown today. The data and information that is stored and available to the Content Management System is ideal for model-training and building a corpus of data specific to the user. Generating, improving and suggesting content of all types that is specific to the data set will be another lead forward in the utility of these tools. We see a future where AI will support and enhance the work we all do, and see the necessity to integrate the technology deeply into the tools and solutions we create.”