10 Ways of Using AI for Your WordPress Blog

Ah, the AI revolution! Since AI made its grand entrance, software bosses have been pressuring developers to incorporate AI into their products somehow. So, we’ve seen a flow of WordPress plugins exploiting AI capabilities, regardless of whether it makes sense or adds real value.

Thankfully, the initial hype is fading, and we’re beginning to see a more measured approach to AI integration. The focus shifts from “Can we add AI?” to “Should we add AI?” Everyone knows about the wonderful strides in AI-optimized SEO and content generation, but there are now other useful ways to enhance WordPress with AI. This brings us to today’s list of interesting and useful ways to add AI to WordPress to improve the experience for our users. 

How to use AI-powered plugins to improve your WordPress blog

Integrating AI plugins into your WordPress blog can significantly enhance its functionality, user experience, and overall appeal. But don’t forget to regularly update and fine-tune these plugins to leverage the latest AI advancements. Here’s how you can effectively use AI plugins to improve your WordPress blog.

1. Wordfence Security by Defiant

Hackers now use AI tools to hack websites. As website owners and developers, we secure our devices with advanced threat detection and use VPNs with malware protection while we surf and work, but our websites will need stronger protection than ever before.

Our only chance to defeat bad actors and keep them out of our WordPress backend environments is to use AI in a defensive capacity. Wordfence Security is a comprehensive WordPress security plugin. It has an endpoint firewall, a built-in malware scanner, and other tools, such as a highly secure login security path. 

How the tool works: The AI capabilities provide real-time firewall rules and updates for malware signatures via a Threat Defense Feed. AI analyzes the latest malware variants, and WordPress exploits, then turns them into firewall rules and recognizable malware signatures. The built-in malware scanner checks themes, core files, and plugins to identify malware, backdoors, code injects, and other threats.

Still, it also uses AI to compare your core and plugin files with the files in the WordPress.org repository to ensure that your files have not been tampered with or that the integrity has not been breached. The premium package adds tools, faster response, and personal assistance with problematic sites. 

2. The AI Infographic Maker (iList by QuantumCloud)

iList’s specialist field is data visualization: The WordPress plugin integrates with OpenAI to create beautiful infographics to illustrate your processes and products or to convey complex information in a simple way.  The dynamic infographics are HTML-based, SEO-friendly, and can be embedded on your website for easy sharing. From a marketing standpoint, iList provides excellent visual content for what might otherwise be a dull website. 

How the tool works: You can choose from charts, graphs, text or image lists, infographics, and other layouts for data visualization using the intuitive iList interface. The bonus feature is the Voting System, where you can ask people to vote for their favorites on your list or infographic. The basic version of the plugin is free, but you may need a subscription to access some of the more advanced layouts, options, and functions.

3. Web Accessibility by accessiBe

Almost 15% of the world’s population find navigating the internet challenging due to some disability. Google takes this number seriously, so their search algorithm rewards websites that take extra measures to remove some of those obstacles for people with disabilities. You can add the Web Accessibility solution via their WordPress accessibility widget and plugin.  

The AI-powered background process optimizes the more complex requirements like the screen reader and keyboard navigation adjustments. The accessibility interface handles UI and design-related tweaks or adjustments.

How the tool works: The accessWidget AI uses contextual analysis to identify the functionality of your website’s elements, then adjusts and optimizes things like alt tags, Icons and buttons, forms, validations, and other attributes for individual user screen-readers.

This on-the-fly adjustment adds keyboard-only functionality to design elements such as menus, buttons, forms, or pop-ups. It makes it possible for blind or visually or motor-impaired people or people with conditions like epilepsy to interact fully with your website.

4. BeyondWords – Text-to-Speech By BeyondWords

Continuing Google’s quest to make the internet accessible to all, BeyondWords is an AI-powered voice tool for audio publishing on WordPress. It uses AI to ‘read’ articles and posts on your website and generate audio versions that can be embedded via a customizable player. 

How the tool works: AI has long moved beyond those early instantly recognizable ‘robot voices’ to lifelike voices that provide a realistic listening experience to keep users engaged. The AI also converts the content into speech synthesis markup language (SSML) to ensure that names, dates, and numbers can be heard and interpreted clearly.

You can develop a bespoke, unique custom voice using BeyondWords’ voice cloning tool. As a bonus, the platform keeps track of listener engagement and can provide listener engagement statistics via the BeyondWords dashboard.

5. AI Search Bar By Infinity Softech

This plugin integrates OpenAI’s powerful search capabilities into your website, which can be a nice marketing touch and a fun way for your readers to interact and spend more time lingering on your website. It’s beneficial if you are trying to grow traffic to a new website or create some hype around your brand. 

How the tool works: Use a shortcode to add the AI search function to any part of your website.  When a visitor types a query in the search bar on your website, the AI Search Bar plugin sends this query to OpenAI’s API. The API processes the query via OpenAI’s machine-learning models and returns the most relevant results. These results are then displayed in the search bar on your website.

Remember that although the plugin is free, you may need to pay an OpenAi subscription fee because of the high number of queries you can generate!

6. Knowledge Base for Documentation, FAQs with AI Assistance

FAQs and How-To documentation are not only for e-learning or informational sites. Most online shops or services must also explain how their products or pricing works. The documentation must be accurate and look professional, and that’s where the Knowledge Base for Documentation, FAQs with AI Assistance by Echo Plugins comes in because the plugin uses ChatGPT AI assistance to help write, link, tag, and organize the content. 

You can also check weDocs with AI capabilities when creating a knowledge base for your product.

How the tool works: It provides a variety of templates, layouts, and customization settings and supports tabs, basic, or category layouts. There’s also a built-in search bar. You can add tags, breadcrumbs, and comments to the documentation and navigate easily within the document set using a back button and the neat built-in navigation sidebar.

The AI capabilities are responsible for auto-generating TOCs and article outlines, filling your content, and checking spelling and grammar.  The bonus feature is the free Help Dialog Chat plugin. It provides a chatbot-like dialog based on the documentation it just helped you to create. 

Premium features include tight control over public and private articles, multiple Knowledge Bases, making things faster by importing and exporting articles and categories, allowing users to vote on articles, presenting documents as PDFs or external docs, adding video links, and much more.

7. The Image SEO WordPress Plugin by Image SEO

Many well-SEO websites meet their Waterloo when the website owner realizes he has to go back and add alt tags to his entire library. It’s super-annoying, dull, slow, repetitive work, but it must be done if you want perfect SEO scores. So, enter the Image SEO WordPress plugin.

It leverages Artificial Intelligence to scrutinize, classify, and describe images, then populates those alt tags with optimal results. It auto-generates alternative texts (alt text or alt tag) and names for images, which you may override with manual editing if you like. 

How the tool works: It auto-generates alternative texts and names when you upload the image. It also generates social cards and optimizes images for social media platforms like Facebook or Instagram. The alt tag checker ensures you don’t miss anything, but the best bonus feature is that you can bulk edit all your images. If you are patient, you can use the free version (10 free images per month), but the premium product is affordable.

8. Timetics by Arraytics 

Timetics is an AI-powered appointment booking and calendar scheduling plugin. It is beneficial for coaches, teachers, consultants, or mentors. Apart from its excellent integration with most noted third-party software, Tinetics can also be used as a clever marketing tool because AI is making inroads into producing hyper-targeted content for internet users.

Timetics’ newest AI integration recommends meetings to customers based on their previous booking history. This feature could increase bookings and influence business growth if you sell recurring services like consultations, hair stylist appointments, or annual gutter inspections. 

How the tool works: It is the management of online schedules with no restrictions on the number of appointments. You can arrange virtual meetings across time zones via Google Meet, integrate schedules with Google Calendar and WooCommerce, and even take payment via Stripe.

It gives each user a dashboard where customers can edit profiles, check booking history, reschedule, or book new appointments. The Pro version is even more versatile as it offers virtual lectures in classroom settings with Seat Plans and extended workflow integration into their CRM and workflow systems.

9. AI ChatBot by QuantumCloud 

If you dislike third-party branding on your website elements, try AI Chatbot for WordPress – WPBot. This AI-powered ChatBot plugin can be powered by DialogFlow or OpenAI GPT-3 (Pro Version) to give it AI and natural language processing capabilities. It can operate in the Natural Language Processing Mode or the Button Menu Driven Mode, or you can combine both methods. 

How the tool works: It supports any language and can start interactions with website users, display answers or FAQs, or get visitors to leave an email or phone number so you can get back to them personally. 

The professional version offers more advanced features like Onsite Retargeting, which allows targeted advertising and integrates with other Live chat systems like Facebook Messenger. You can still generate some decent free images of any topic using your imagination and a text prompt. 

10. Imajinn – Magical AI Image Generation like DALL·E by Infinite Uploads

When you’re crushing that new article for your blog, you have to stop to look for free images or buy stock photos!  Try Imajinn, the magic of AI image generation via a WordPress plugin. It’s similar to tools like DALL·E 2 and Midjourney, although not quite as versatile. You can still generate some very decent free images of any topic by just using your imagination and a text prompt. 

How the tool works: Enter a description of what you want to create, and Imajinn will generate a stunning image for you in seconds. The images are royalty-free and unique. The bonus feature is Imajinn’s built-in Prompt Genie, which can help you describe your vision better and get amazingly artistic images.

You can also set it up to stick to a particular style or art medium and enhance colors and tweak details with various touchup tools. You don’t need an API key to connect; it’s cloud-based, and you click to connect, making it faster. 

Invest in AI tools wisely

The rattle and clamor around AI will continue until we learn to articulate our needs and define what we need AI for — in the meantime, taking each of those pricey plugins for a spin to see what works can burn quite a hole in your pocket. Here’s a friendly tip: Keep your purse strings tight until you’ve figured out where you really need that AI magic. Then, invest wisely and watch the magic unfold!