WordPress Just Built AI Directly Into Its Editor. No Plugins Required.

WordPress.com shipped an AI assistant on February 17, 2026, and it's not another chatbot floating in the corner of your screen. The WordPress AI Assistant is built into three distinct parts of the platform: the site editor, the media library, and block notes. It ships at no extra cost for Business and Commerce plan subscribers.

That last part matters. Most CMS AI tools are either third-party plugins with their own subscription fees or sidebar chatbots that can't actually touch your site's layout. This one can.

What It Actually Does

The assistant works across three surfaces, each with different capabilities.

Site Editor. You can give it natural-language commands like "make this section feel more modern" or "add a testimonials section below the hero." It handles layout adjustments, style changes, new sections, and full page creation. The key differentiator: it understands your site's existing content and layout context, not just the block you're currently editing. Ask it to match a new section's style to the rest of your site, and it knows what "the rest of your site" looks like.

Media Library. A "Generate Image" button lets you create images directly inside your media library using Google's Nano Banana models (the same image generation family behind Gemini). You can also edit existing images: change aspect ratios, apply style transfers, or replace objects within a photo. This eliminates the round-trip to Canva or Midjourney for basic image needs.

Block Notes. WordPress 6.9 introduced block notes as a collaboration feature. Now you can type @ai inside a note to ask questions with your content as context. Use it for fact-checks on claims in your draft, headline alternatives, paragraph suggestions, or pulling in relevant external links. Think of it as a research assistant that already knows what your article says.

The Block Theme Requirement

Here's the catch that will trip up a lot of WordPress.com users: the AI assistant only works with block themes. If you're running a classic theme, the assistant won't appear in your editor at all. You can still use the image generation tools in the Media Library, but the editor and notes integration is off-limits.

This isn't a bug; it's a technical constraint. Block themes expose layout structure in a way the AI can read and modify. Classic themes don't. If you've been putting off the migration to a block theme, this might be the push.

How to Turn It On

The feature is opt-in, not on by default. Go to Settings > AI tools in your WordPress.com dashboard and enable it. If you built your site using WordPress.com's AI website builder, it's already active.

There's no usage cap mentioned in the launch materials, but Automattic hasn't committed to unlimited generation either. Worth watching.

What This Means for Your Plugin Stack

If you're currently paying for a third-party AI writing plugin (Jetpack AI, Bertha AI, AI Engine, or similar), this changes the math. The WordPress AI Assistant covers a wide range of the same ground: content rewriting, tone adjustment, translation, headline suggestions, and image generation. And it's included in your existing plan.

Where third-party tools still win: specialized workflows. If you need bulk content generation, SEO-specific optimization, or fine-grained model selection (choosing between GPT-4o and Claude for different tasks), dedicated plugins still offer more control. But for the practitioner who just wants "help me fix this paragraph and generate a header image," the built-in tool handles it.

The Bigger Picture

WordPress powers roughly 43% of all websites on the internet. When a platform at that scale ships native AI tooling, it changes what "table stakes" means for every CMS. Squarespace, Wix, and Ghost now have to answer a straightforward question: where's yours?

For practitioners already on WordPress.com Business or Commerce plans, the move is simple. Enable it, try the @ai tag in block notes on your next draft, and test an image generation in the media library. You'll know within 15 minutes whether it replaces a plugin or supplements one. Start with block notes; it's the least disruptive way to test the assistant's understanding of your content.