Building the Open, Intelligent Web: How Automattic and WordPress VIP are Shaping the Future of AI

For more than two decades, WordPress has powered the open web. Today, Automattic and WordPress VIP are taking the same open-source principles that transformed publishing and applying them to the next revolution: artificial intelligence.

Together, we’re building the foundation for an AI-native web that’s open, responsible, and built to last.

These ideas were shared by James LePage and Brian Alvey during WordPress VIP’s recent AI Day event. Across two days, they spoke with media, publishing, and enterprise customers about how Automattic and WordPress VIP are shaping the future of open, intelligent publishing.

A philosophy rooted in openness

At the heart of Automattic’s AI strategy is a simple belief: AI should belong to everyone who builds the web.

As James LePage, Automattic’s Director of Engineering and AI and co-lead of WordPress Core AI, put it:

“We want to maintain that extensibility of WordPress core. You can build and do anything with it. So what in AI do we build to enable that mentality to continue?” 

Instead of creating closed systems or opaque “magic” features, Automattic is developing the core building blocks that make AI development possible across the entire WordPress ecosystem — from individual creators to global enterprises.

That philosophy extends to how the technology interacts with people, too. WordPress VIP’s Brian Alvey summarized it in two principles:

“We keep a human in the loop… and we show our work.” 

Every AI product, from site building to analytics, is designed to enhance human creativity, not replace it.

Building the foundations, not the fads

Automattic’s Core AI Team, formalized in 2025, is focused on what LePage calls the “stable primitives” of AI — the foundational systems others can build on.

The team came together inside Automattic after years of experimentation across products like Jetpack, WordPress, and Parse.ly. The company saw a growing need to standardize AI integrations, unify its experiments under a shared architecture, and contribute those innovations back to the open web.

“The Core AI Team came together to answer a simple question: what does AI mean for WordPress?” 

Automattic’s vision is to create a central, open-source framework that defines how WordPress interacts with AI — one that would scale across Automattic’s products and the global WordPress community. They’re building the plumbing that makes the ecosystem AI-capable. It’s not about one product — it’s about setting the standard for everyone. 

The Core AI Team’s current focus is on building shared APIs and protocols — infrastructure that will ensure security, interoperability, and open innovation for developers worldwide. 

Launching in December 2025 with WordPress 6.9, these foundational systems include:

• Abilities API – defines what WordPress can do so AI systems understand how to interact with it.
  
• MCP Adapter – securely connects WordPress to AI assistants like Claude and ChatGPT.
  
• PHP Client AI API – gives developers direct programmatic access to large-language-model interactions.
  

Together, these tools make WordPress “AI-ready” — an open platform where AI can read, write, and manipulate structured context while maintaining full user control. 

LePage emphasized that flexibility and transparency are intentional, paramount to Automattic’s AI philosophy:

“We use what WordPress has to offer, and because of that, we get what WordPress gives, which is unlimited extensibility and unlimited opportunity.”

From core to enterprise: turning infrastructure into intelligence

While Automattic builds AI capabilities in the open-source core of WordPress, WordPress VIP extends those same capabilities into secure, scalable enterprise products — allowing both the community and large organizations to benefit.

“Our job at WordPress VIP, is to take what Automattic builds and extend it for 200-person newsrooms or 11,000-contributor content teams — to take that open-ended, infinite, ‘do anything you want’ WordPress and lock it down [with] rules and governance.”

— Brian Alvey, CTO, WordPress VIP

That means embedding AI into products like Parse.ly, WordPress VIP’s analytics suite, and creating new tools that solve real editorial challenges — conversational content insights and recommendations, headline testing, engagement optimization, and automated cross-linking that turns hours of manual work into minutes.

At the same time, VIP is addressing the existential risks AI introduces to content businesses. Alvey showcased new integrations such as Tollbit, which lets publishers charge AI crawlers for content access, and AI referral analytics, which reveal how much traffic now originates from AI platforms.

“Having an awareness of what’s coming in and having the ability to send [bots] somewhere to pay you money are very important things in terms of the existential threat of bots stealing your most precious resource, your awesome content.”

WordPress VIP is also working to build secure Model Context Protocol (MCP) functionality for enterprise-level WordPress users — a framework that will govern how AI connects to enterprise data, aligning with the same compliance standards that make WordPress VIP a FedRAMP-ready platform.

“Enterprise AI has to start with trust.”

— Brian Alvey, CTO, WordPress VIP

Finally, Agentforce, an upcoming WordPress VIP integration with Salesforce, will enable teams to create and manage intelligent, conversational experiences — like AI-powered chat interfaces or lead-generation agents — directly on their WordPress sites using verified enterprise data. 

Real products, real progress

Automattic’s open-core approach to AI is already delivering real-world value.

On the consumer side, Automattic’s AI Website Builder, now live on WordPress.com, uses AI to assemble entire websites from a short prompt, powered by native WordPress blocks and themes. And Telex, also live on WordPress.com, turns natural-language prompts into working WordPress blocks.

For publishers and marketers, Parse.ly Sage lets teams analyze and brainstorm content through a chatbot interface — combining Automattic’s core AI work with VIP’s enterprise data layer.

A history of building in the open

Automattic’s AI story predates the current hype cycle. For years, our teams have experimented with machine learning in Jetpack, WordPress.com, and Parse.ly Analytics — quietly shaping what would become the Core AI initiative.

The 2025 formation of the WordPress Core AI Team marked a turning point: the shift from experiments to standards, ensuring that the benefits of AI flow back into open source.

WordPress VIP’s evolution runs in parallel, transforming those open foundations into enterprise-grade solutions that are auditable, governable, and future-proof.

The future: an open, intelligent web

For Automattic and WordPress VIP, AI isn’t about automation for its own sake — it’s about making the web itself more intelligent: a living, learning platform where every creator, publisher, and enterprise can build safely and innovate freely.

We believe that AI should empower the people who build the web, not own it.