Note: the following post contains affiliate links.  I receive a portion of any purchases made through these links, at no additional cost to you.  —TPP

On Saturday I wrote at length about my idea for a physical, portable, monthly (now, after some feedback, likely quarterly) publication packed with fast-paced, pulp-style fiction for readers who are hungry to read short stories but don’t want to do so on a screen.  I suspect there is a significant niche audience for this kind of publication, and it dovetails with my calls for conservatives to support like-minded authors.  In an age of AI and online publishing, there is a segment of the population that craves authenticity and good storytelling.

Paradoxically, I turned to AI to begin brainstorming this idea.  Regular readers will know that I am an AI-skeptic.  I believe some aspects of AI are corrosive to creativity, such as doing actual writing (and, therefore, thinking) for humans; however, AI is hugely useful as a sounding board to conceptualize an idea.  That is especially useful when an AI inspires real-world human creativity, and I think it can be powerful as an aid to human creativity, so long as we don’t make it a replacement for it.

That said, WordPress.com has their own AI-powered website builder, and I’ve been looking for an excuse to play around with it.  I was initially torn about the ethics of creating a website using WordPress AI, but the way I look at it is that WordPress is offering a series of text-based prompts to create a website using tools that are readily available to WordPress.com users; it’s just offering up choices to users that they might not realize are native to WordPress.com.

In essence, the AI isn’t creating the website instead of the user, but is responding to the user’s prompts to design a website with the user.  Ultimately, the final product is the result of substantial user input.

Regardless, I decided to feed WordPress AI the following prompt to see what it would cook up:

WordPress, I’d like to create a website for a pulp fiction quarterly magazine that I’m thinking of organizing. I want it to help advertise and sell a portable, physical publication that is pocket-sized (4″x6″ or 5″x8″), printed on newsprint/pulp, full of new, short fiction from up-and-coming writers. Each issue is about fifty pages (tentatively), with a subscription cost of ~$10 per issue (inclusive of shipping). I want to emphasize that this publication is for people who want to read good, fast-paced fiction on the go.

I had a little trouble at first, as my prompt would yield only a thin horizontal line before disappearing into a sea of white.  That’s when I realized that the Brave Browser is sometimes a bit overzealous about blocking certain processes, so after disabling its shields and answering a few of WordPress AI‘s questions, WordPress AI gave me the following:

Astute readers might note the “broken image” icons in the pictures above.  I should note that I was asking WordPress AI to help create this website while using the hotspot on my ancient iPhone SE for an Internet connection.  I still haven’t setup broadband Internet in the new house yet, and have been using my PC’s wireless receiver to connect to the Internet via my phone.  What’s remarkable is that WordPress AI was able to work even with this terrible connection, and when I clicked to edit the images, the pictures did load up successfully:

WordPress AI generated the following in response to my prompt in the above image:

When working with AI, there’s some jankiness to be expected, especially with image generation.  Putting my last name in the placeholder title (“Cook’s Pulp Quarterly” sounds a little stodgy and a little pretentious for a publication that will likely run stories about gorillas on Mars sword-fighting squidmen and what not) seemed to confuse WordPress AI slightly, as the subtitle in this sample of a possible issue’s cover indicates:

But that “jankiness” is part of the fun—and highlights how WordPress AI is more like a helpful guide than an all-knowing intelligence that seeks to eliminate all human life (to be clear, it’s very much not the latter).

Besides the fun of image generation and the impressive speed of constructing a site—even on a terrible connection—WordPress AI did not try to “glaze” me the way other AIs will.  Instead, it merely responded with a series of follow-up questions when necessary.  Every AI seems to have a “tone,” and WordPress AI‘s was refreshingly neutral and matter-of-fact.  For someone who is at a loss about where to even begin making a website, that neutral tone was very calming and straightforward.

It even brought up questions that I would not have considered myself, questions which got me thinking about ways to improve this website (and WordPress AI can do that, too; more experimentation to come).  Here are some things the WordPress AI asked me as I generated and tweaked the site:

• Should I accept pre-orders now, or create a waitlist (note that at this point, store features are not yet fully available, and I did not experiment with any e-commerce features)
• Should I have a separate e-mail address for submissions?
• What should the “punch-line” of the website be?
• Did I want to share full details about pricing, size of the publication, etc., or did I prefer to keep those mysterious?
• Did I want to link the website back to this blog?

And more!  These questions can be skipped or deferred to an extent.  When I first put the site together, I “speed-ran” it (I was trying to get a draft done before church yesterday morning), and WordPress AI and I created a draft website in about ten minutes.

I went back later and did some tweaking, which was a bit more involved, but I probably spent another thirty minutes responding to more granular prompts.  Again, that would have been even quicker if I a.) had a good Internet connection and b.) had not been writing blog posts in another tab at the same time.

All in all, the process of using WordPress AI is very user-friendly and collaborative.  It really felt like I was in control of the process, and WordPress AI was a helpful, experienced aid giving me simple, actionable prompts to fine-tune my vision.  For more experienced WordPress users, you can easily go in “behind” WordPress AI and tweak further.

If I were to launch a companion blog to this one, for example, I would definitely use WordPress AI as a starting point, then would go back and refine later.  Because it’s building a fully WordPress.com site, WordPress AI offers up all the hosting, security, and updates that WordPress.com offers (which I detailed in this post earlier this year).

The whole experience has given me a more nuanced view of AI in general, but WordPress AI specifically is one of those use-cases that seems to complement, rather than replace, human creativity.  That’s something to recognize and celebrate.

What tools have you used for website creation?  Would you be open to using WordPress AI to create a website or to tweak your existing one?  What potentials and pitfalls might WordPress AI offer for users?  Leave a comment and let me know your thoughts.