WordPress is doubling down on artificial intelligence. On Tuesday, the platform officially announced the creation of a dedicated AI team to help shape the future of AI tools within its massive developer community.
This new initiative marks a strategic shift for WordPress, which has long served as the backbone of millions of websites across the internet. Now, the platform is stepping in to bring structure and direction to the growing number of AI experiments coming from its open-source contributors.
At the helm is James LePage, head of AI at Automattic, WordPress’ parent company. He’ll be joined by notable names including Felix Arntz and Pascal Birchler—both from Google—and Jeff Paul, Director of Open Source at design firm 10up. Together, this team will work to ensure that AI development on WordPress remains cohesive and aligned with the platform’s long-term vision.
According to WordPress Executive Director Mary Hubbard, having a centralized AI team will help avoid fragmented efforts and promote a more thoughtful, unified approach to innovation. In a blog post, she emphasized the importance of collaboration and coordination as WordPress navigates the evolving AI landscape.
This move isn’t just symbolic. WordPress currently hosts more than 660 AI-related plug-ins. These range from AI-generated templates and smart SEO assistants to chatbots that support users in real time. The most downloaded plug-ins highlight just how eager the developer community has been to explore artificial intelligence—but also why a guiding framework is now essential.
As AI reshapes how content is created, optimized, and interacted with, WordPress wants to make sure it stays ahead of the curve. This formalized team is the platform’s latest step toward building smarter, more intuitive tools for the web—while keeping its open-source values front and center.
