WordPress, AI, and the Human Niche

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Every day I spend one to two hours thinking about what to write for my blog. Yesterday I noticed that WordPress wants to get AI to draft the first version of posts using the AI model of our choice, as long as it’s American, and take away the hours of blank page syndrome.

If you’re working towards a deadline, and you’re writing for work, that might make life easier, but it might also make blogging less niche, less interesting, and more kitsch.

If you look at AI generated photos and videos they are kitsch. They’re too clean. They’re too vibrant with colour. They’re in bad taste, rather than humanly creative.

WordPress wants AI to draft, but it also wants AI to spellcheck, correct grammar, and modify what is written, according to feedback. It wants to turn blogging, a human, individual pursuit into a corporate sea of mediocrity that no one will read. It will also flood our RSS readers and search results with impersonal junk.

Remember, a blog is about human connections. Social media was already ruined by the shift to hashtags and influencers. WordPress is going to destroy its own niche.

My Emigration from WordPress started with React

My emigration from WordPress started with the introduction of React to WordPress. That’s when I noticed a big difference in how responsive the site felt, and how bloated it has become. That’s why I played with Eleventy, Hugo, and Classicpress. Classicpress is a much lighter version of WordPress that forked around WordPress 4.7 if I remember correctly. It’s nice to use and it is definitely worth looking into if you like a lighter version of WordPress without the bloat.

WordPress Since 2006 or Earlier

It’s worth adding this context. I have been using WordPress for twenty years or more, since 2006, for the current install. I am not basing this off of trendy conversations, but off of being a webmaster and then blogger since mid 1996. That’s the term that was used for many years, before adapting with the times.

Google Search and AI Answers

A key reason for us to keep writing blog posts as humans, rather than letting AI write for us, is that search engines already give AI answers tailored to what people are asking. People are already writing prompts to get answers to their questions. By shifting towards AI, rather than human written blogs, and AI edited blog posts, rather than Human edited blog posts, WordPress sites are self-harming.

Why would I visit an AI generated blog at a specific website when I can get the same response straight from the AI client of my choice, tailored precisely to my conversation history, and current prompt?

WordPress and Auttomatic claim "we need to be on the bandwagon to remain relevant" to which I respond, "It’s by being on the bandwagon that you mark your irrelevance".

Of Tokens, Jetpack, Updraft, Akismet and WordFence

It’s worth remarking that for a while WordPress was free and open source software without overheads except for the cost of the web host. With time we had to add akismet for comment spam, WordFrence, to stop unauthorised logins, updraft for site backups, and jetpack for site visibility and optimisation. All of these tools started free before being affordable, and eventually exorbitant in price.

If we add AI tokens to the soup, then WordPress is becoming unaffordable. The day ActivityPub becomes a supplemental cost for federation, is the day WordPress becomes irrelevant.

According to Gemini you could be spending 638 USD on hidden fees, and that’s without web hosting and the sliding cost of AI tokens.

And Finally

After being critical of the shift towards Ai by WordPress I did install the beta tester plugin on a WordPress instance to experiment with. So far the experimental features are excerpt generation, alt text generation (which i wish BlueSky and Mastodon had), image generation, which will scandalise many, due to the kitsch usually created, review notes, which is good for team work, content summarisation (notice the s I used) and title generation.

One of the challenges I face with almost all of my blog posts is the conclusion/so what question at the end. I’d quite enjoy having a "So what was my point, from what i have written?"

And finally, I got AI to write a caption for a photo on a test WordPress 7 instance I instantiated before concluding this blog post. I see value in alt-text generation.