For AI to succeed in WordPress, it will require the adoption of the WordPress hosting ecosystem. If you work for a hosting company that provides managed hosting for WordPress, then this article is for you. Check out the AI Building Blocks for WordPress post if you need an introduction to the Core Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. AI efforts.
The Provider An AI service offering models for generation, embeddings, or other capabilities (e.g., Anthropic, Google, OpenAI). onboarding problem
Imagine if WordPress hosting was BYOD (Bring Your Own Database). The host is willing to provide the filesystem and WordPress instance, but for it to really work you need to somehow hook up your own database. Plugins likely each come up with their own way of helping users find and connect a database. At the very least, a significant percentage of the market would be lost. Putting this kind of technical requirement on users to figure out adds significant friction to virtually every non-technical user.
The same problem exists for AI. There are a number of AI plugins for WordPress right now. They all have their own way of helping the user to find an AI provider, generate an API An API or Application Programming Interface is a software intermediary that allows programs to interact with each other and share data in limited, clearly defined ways. key, and copy-paste it in the WordPress settings. To many of this this doesnโt sound too bad, but such plugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party authors have shared that this remains the most significant barrier to entry for users.
If AI is to be considered a fundamental component of WordPress, the same way databases are, our project depends onย hosts taking ownership of this step and including it in their offerings.
Why itโs worth it
This of course means the cost of developing a way to provide AI in hosting as well as the ongoing token cost from AI usage. Itโs not an inconsequential undertaking. But it is worth it, and hereโs why:
The Internet has transformed and is transforming in real time, starting in just the past two years. Offerings like Lovable used to be far too quirky to be usable a couple years ago, and now the prospect of AI building a decent website is real. The reality is that itโs not one WordPress host, one WordPress product, or one WordPress company versus these prolific solutions, itโs all of WordPress. All WordPress ships must rise with the tide of AI, so everyone has a part to play.
This sounds a bit existential, and to an extent it is, but itโs also an incredible opportunity. An AI-powered WordPress has the potential to compete with everyone of these solutions. The reason being the same as to why WordPress powers over 40% of the Internet right now: It grows at the rate of its ecosystemโs innovations. As one of the largest open-source projects in the world, no one can keep up with the multitudes of people making it better every day. Armed with AI, there is a real chance to see WordPressโ market share take yet another major jump. When this happens everyone wins.
Once hosts begin including AI in their hosting, the AI-powered features developed by plugin authors will simply work. No extra user steps, just features that feel like magic and wouldโve taken a long time to build. Hosts can also make use of things like MCP Servers in WordPress to create site dashboards that are vastly more capable. As plugins improve their AI integrations, much of this is accessible on a hosting level, allowing for host-level features.
Business opportunities
There are a lot of opportunities to differentiate in this new landscape. Many hosts are likely to go the route of providing a Provider as a proxy to someone like Anthropic, taking advantage of purchasing tokens at volume. This, in turn, can allow different hosts to provide varying levels of AI requests within different plans. Wanting more AI requests can mean upselling to a higher plan or purchasing an AI add-on. Others may explore usage-based billing, instead.
Another opportunity is to explore how developers can be provided with access to the hosted AI Provider to test their plugins on hostsโ specific systems. This ensures that the AI-powered features within plugins work optimally on hostsโ systems.
With this, some hosts may decide to experiment with an in-house model to tentatively drive down costs, or simply handle a specific prompt modality (e.g. text-to-text). This can then be used to provide further differential in cost. Others may want to go the more expensive route and try to provide the best output without trying to be the cheapest.
The point being, standing out as a WordPress host that enables incredible AI-powered features, literally just by being on that host, is a significant competitive advantage. This adds a new dimension in standing out.
Registering the hosted provider
AI integration will work through the WP AI Client, which is proposed to go into WordPress 7.0. Connecting your AI model using this is pretty simple. On a high level, itโs the following steps:
- Create a Provider, which contains and informs the system of your models
- Create one or more Models, including your model capabilities (e.g. can it generate images)
- Connect your Model to your Provider
- Register your Provider with the AI_Client
Authentication is supported to keep your AI API secured, and there are helpers for Providers/Models that communicate over HTTP HTTP is an acronym for Hyper Text Transfer Protocol. HTTP is the underlying protocol used by the World Wide Web and this protocol defines how messages are formatted and transmitted, and what actions Web servers and browsers should take in response to various commands.. If you run into any issues during integration, please make an Issue in the repository or reach out on #core-ai in the Make WordPress channel on Slack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/..
More documentation and examples will be provided over the coming weeks!
Wrapping up
This is an exciting time for WordPress and an exciting opportunity for hosts. For hosts that are the first to bundle AI in their services WordPress will simply have AI-powered features that appear only within those hosts. While most products and SaaS services out there are chasing similar AI features to include in their products and services, WordPress has the opportunity to leapfrog the market and be the first AI-powered CMS.
Props to @annezazu, @jeffpaul, and @isotropic for the pre-publish review!