Automattic launches AI Assistant & we’re slapping the beta label on it

[00:00:00] It’s the WP Minute support, independent WordPress news like this. Join the Slack membership or purchase a classified listing in the weekly newsletter@thewpminute.com slash support. You know how it goes. Everything I mentioned here will be linked up in the newsletter and the blog post. Check out the wp minute.com for the links.

[00:00:21] We have a new show format that we’re going to test probably throughout the summer. I would love. Your feedback, Matt, the wp minute.com email address is where you can find me. Send me your feedback on this, uh, format. What I’ve found with the team has found, and what I’ve talked about before, endlessly, is that creating WordPress.

[00:00:43] Creating a WordPress News podcast, newsletter and blog is very costly, and what we’ve found is with the change of the economic climate across the world, a lot of folks are sort of clawing back on what they’d spend to support an organization like the WP Minute. So we’re sort of revamping our efforts into doing, uh, potentially more editorial, more stories, more original content, uh, like we always have.

[00:01:12] But just to focus on that versus the round of summaries that so many of you in the WordPress community are getting from other members of, uh, the WordPress community. Uh, you know, perfect. Case in point would be, uh, ream Kiss and his newsletter, uh, you know, covering a certain angle of WordPress news. And then of course you’re getting it, uh, at heaps and bounds and social media.

[00:01:38] Um, your other podcasts that you listen to and other newsletters that. You subscribe to. Uh, it’s an interesting position to be in here at the WP Minute. Curating and having commentary around the news has been fantastic and very valuable, and I’ve got a lot of great feedback, uh, for it. It just costs money.

[00:01:57] So, you know, there’s those, uh, that support us, which is fantastic. All of the members that have signed up to the Slack group, uh, at, uh, the wp minute.com/support. Uh, and our current pillar sponsors, blue Host and Pressable, and all of our past sponsors, of course. Uh, but moving forward, keeping this ship running.

[00:02:15] Is going to be a challenge. Uh, and you know, from a content perspective, you probably want more out of us too. I mean, we need to give you a reason to subscribe. And if there’s not enough people who, who are here for the inside baseball of WordPress news, uh, we need to make. Content that will entice you to stay.

[00:02:34] So, you know, we’re gonna focus more on this editorial content and um, we’re gonna slap the big beta label on this for the summertime. So Wednesday podcasts, um, for now are going to be, uh, pulled from. The stories that, uh, you know, I like throughout, uh, that I’ve liked throughout the week, right? Uh, things that I find interesting that I’m going to throw out there and put on stage for you, and then [00:03:00] I’m going to invite others to do the same.

[00:03:02] So, if you’re listening to this and you’ve always wanted to contribute to the WP Minute, you’re already, let’s say, uh, a member in our Slack community, or you’re somebody on the outskirts looking in, you want to do a five minute podcast, I’m inviting you in to do that. Here, uh, to chat about what your big takeaway from the week is.

[00:03:21] And if you need help with audio and, and getting it to sound good, I’m totally open for you. All of that is to say this is a big beta label experiment. Hey, curating and commenting on the weekly news, it might come back, especially if we get a great sponsor. That would be fantastic. Uh, go to, uh, well email me if you’d like to participate in this, Matt, at the wp minute.com.

[00:03:41] Uh, the wp minute.com/support. That was much longer than I wanted to take at the. Intro of, uh, this sort of new summer experiment. Let’s talk about the things that I’ve found interesting. Uh, of course this week. One thing I want you to know is the wp minute.com/plus. That’s the WP Minute Plus podcast. Those are the long form extended form interview podcast stuff you’ve heard me do on Matt report, uh, before sitting down with others.

[00:04:06] But we do have this almost three hour. Blockbuster, uh, series that was, uh, produced and co-hosted or hosted by David Bassett. Uh, we’ve called it the cast of characters here at the WB Minutes, celebrating WordPress 20th anniversary. If you’ve not heard that and you’re, you know, looking for something to listen to, uh, while you’re, wait, traveling to Word Camp Eu, going back and forth those long plane flights, uh, to and from your destinations, check that out.

[00:04:32] That’s almost three hours of folks from around the community chatting about their. Uh, journey through WordPress over the last 20 years. The wp minute.com/plus. Check that out. Speaking of Word Camp eu, I’ve been seeing all the hashtags flying through. I’m getting some major FOMO set in, uh, the company that I work for, gravity Forms.

[00:04:52] There’s a bunch of folks over there. Uh, so part of my, uh, working team is there, uh, Raquel from the WP Minute, and of course Divvy. She’s over there too. If you wanna talk shop about, uh, the WP Minute and joining the membership, be sure to seek out. Raquel, it looks like it’s going to be a, a fantastic time.

[00:05:09] Interesting though. I saw actually Reem Kiss take a photo of this, that it’s the European WordPress conference. I, I thought it was just Word Camp eu, word Camp Europe. Um, but that was an interesting title to see if you’re at, um, if you’re at Word Camp eu, uh, tag us in a photo. Uh, if you find Raquel, uh, tag, uh, at the wp minute.com on Twitter.

[00:05:31] Okay. Some of the meat of this week’s news, it was a slow news week. Um, most interestingly, I wrote this piece last week because I heard Seth Godin on the Tim Ferris podcast chat about this sort of like top secret AI tool that automatic was working on Seth. Um, You know, famous for blogging every single day.

[00:05:52] Uh, a few years ago, I can’t remember at this point, had moved over to wordpress.com. We know he’s friendly with, uh, with Mullenweg cuz he’s been at the, the previous state of the words these [00:06:00] last couple of years, or at least last year. And he hinted at some kind of AI tool and, and Tim Ferris said that he wasn’t sure if it was, uh, if it was public yet.

[00:06:08] Uh, you, I’ll link up my blog post in the, uh, in the post here so that you can go back and listen to the timestamps and actually hear that. That interview. Well, yesterday, Jetpack announced their AI assistant, um, maybe this was it. Uh, it’s obviously gonna be on wordpress.com and, uh, through Jetpack. If you’re a self-hosted WordPress account, you know, th this is right now dubbed as a writing tool.

[00:06:31] Uh, but remember, um, Matt Mullenweg had said in a post static message a few weeks ago to like really learn AI to be involved with it, to test with it. I’ve got another video here in the blog post linked up from Jamie Marlin who interviewed him about ai. So if he’s going deep on ai, I suspect that the jet pack AI assistant is going to go beyond that.

[00:06:53] Um, It’s gonna go beyond writing. It’s gonna go beyond writing tools. What else is it gonna do? Is it going to perform, uh, administrative tasks on your WordPress website? Uh, is it gonna build pages for you? Full site editing Gutenberg blocks, is it gonna go pull data in from other sources around the web? I mentioned this before, that.

[00:07:10] I felt I mentioned this in that in the blog post I wrote last week, that I feel like automatic needs to win the relevancy race and, um, they have sort of lagged behind it, contradictory to another link, uh, that’ll be in the newsletter today, um, from Get Ellipses that the. There that there is a, an increased demand for WordPress.

[00:07:32] I still think it needs to be relevant. I almost feel like it’s the best tool, but also the only tool to do a lot. It is a great utility, um, for the open web, for the modern web, and for building out websites and all kinds of other solutions. But would AI. Replace that relevancy in, I don’t know, a few short years.

[00:07:53] Right? Imagine somebody as AI matures and I’m not, Nope. Like a lot of things, I, I kind of straddle the middle line before I really, really go, really go all in on in either direction, especially when it comes to technology. Would AI make WordPress I irrelevant in the sense of I go to. Bard. I go to Chad, g p t, and I say I want a website with a content management back, uh, CMS backend that allows me to create a collection of books, uh, an archive book sorted by year.

[00:08:28] And does it build this CMS backend that effectively you would build with WordPress? Custom post types, custom fields, a c f, put it on a web host. Would it just compile that request and spit it out and God knows what code and does the user care at the end of the day, right? Like we always say, our customers really don’t care about what, how the WordPress website is built as long as it was built for better or worse.

[00:08:54] But does automatic lose that relevancy race? Not in [00:09:00] the sense again of, Hey, is WordPress cool? Should I use WordPress or should I use this PHP framework? But the relevancy of, Hey, this tech, like that technology is just too hard. That five minute install, that’s too, that’s too hard. That’s too hard. It’s too much time.

[00:09:13] I can just go to chat. G p t. So you build me a website with a C m S back in, uh, I’m gonna have a user login in, it’s gonna have a e-commerce checkout. And then it just spits it out to a Heroku machine. Is that, does that, does that even exist anymore? I don’t know. It’s gonna, you know, there’s Chad, G b t add-on, it’s gonna spit it out to some, uh, AWS instance and it’s just hosted for you.

[00:09:32] And then even web hosts become irrelevant at that point in the, in the sense, right, in the sense. So, uh, very curious to see where Jet Pack AI goes. Uh, but I’ll tell you one thing though about ai, especially when it comes to the audio space, and I know I’m biased. Uh, having done a podcast now for 12 years, They did their AI announcement blog post with a video CR with a voiceover by ai.

[00:09:57] And I might, I might actually go back, uh, download the transcript and, and read it myself because it’s just, there is a zero ounce of enthusiasm and excitement in that AI voice that they used to announce exciting new ai. I mean, I get it. Somebody there was like, well, we’re using AI for everything. Let’s just go and use the voiceover for that.

[00:10:18] Uh, I did reply to the wordpress.com team. They, I, and I asked them if it was, uh, in fact done by an AI voiceover. They said, yes. So, uh, I dunno, just a little quick right there. Uh, check it out. Listen to that video. Let me know what you think. Tweet at me at Matt Madera’s on Twitter or at, uh, the WP Minute on Twitter.

[00:10:36] And lastly, I’m just gonna throw at you because we’ve used up a chunk of time today, um, full site editing. Up updates are coming to the ui. Really interesting. Uh, link, uh, hat tip to beer. Get poly hack for dropping that into, um, uh, Twitter, which I then, uh, put into, uh, the WP Minutes, slack, lots of updates, icons coming, uh, toolbar icons, updates refreshed to the full site editing.

[00:11:00] Uh, if you wanna stay in the loop of, of future design so you can kind of understand where the UI is going. I know we all kind of struggle with full site editing. I say we all, but you know, generally, uh, me, but I know there’s others. Um, so if you want to get a say in how this stuff is being built, uh, check out the make WordPress link that’ll have in the show notes.

[00:11:19] That’s it for today’s episode. We went doubled, almost tripled the time today. Uh, let me know what you think about this new format. Again, if you’re interested in contributing. To a, uh, a podcast audio episode. Three minutes, five minutes, 10 minutes. Email me matt the wp minute.com trying to keep, uh, the WordPress community journalism hope alive.

[00:11:40] Remember, this is an experiment. We might go back to curating and commenting on the weekly news as we’ve done proper, the wp minute.com/support. It’s your best way to support us, become a member. Support us, buy us a digital coffee, or if you want to reach out and, and become, uh, a flagship sponsor, matt@thewpminute.com.

[00:11:59] That’s how you can [00:12:00] find me. That’s all you need to hear from me today. Hope you enjoy Word Camp Europe. Uh, share us on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, wherever you do social media. And don’t forget to subscribe to the newsletter@thewpminute.com.