Almost every device we use to automate complex tasks uses artificial intelligence. However, we often argue that such devices are not “intelligent” but simply calculating tools after we learn how they work and use them in our everyday lives.
Today, implementing artificial intelligence in software development is a sign of progress and a way to design new, more innovative features. This article will present the best WordPress AI plugins for creating better websites.
How Is Artificial Intelligence Used in WordPress?
Artificial intelligence (AI) is a simulation of human intelligence demonstrated by machines. AI refers to different processes in computer systems that mimic human behavior, such as using logic and rules for decision-making and learning from analyzing data to improve performance (machine learning – ML).
Regarding WordPress, artificial intelligence improves different management processes, automates complex jobs, and tailors website content according to visitors’ expectations and search engines’ requirements. AI-powered plugins are becoming popular solutions to make sites faster, smarter, and more accessible.
Among the main tasks that AI plugins accomplish are:
- Boost website SEO. AI-powered plugins allow optimizing posts, pages, and other structures while they’re being created. Such plugins analyze website content, compare it to competitor data, and suggest changes that must be done to increase page views and attract an audience that relates to your content.
- Make websites more accessible. By designing accessible websites, you establish a better reputation for your brand and get through to more people. Many WordPress sites now use text-to-speech technologies provided by AI-based tools.
- Introduce smart assistants. Chatbots that use artificial intelligence can improve customer service because they are available 24/7. They can make human workers more efficient by completing low-end repetitive tasks.
Certainly, there are many more ways AI technologies can make websites better. But, sometimes, website owners must limit the usage of content-generating tools if they want their content to be visible on search engines. According to Google Search Advocate John Mueller, Google Search Console considers automatically generated content as spam. It seems Google doesn’t have the ability to detect auto-generated content, but I’m sure it’s on the way.
WordPress AI Plugins
Many WordPress plugins use artificial intelligence to facilitate website management and improve content. Here’s a list of the best plugins that implement AI for different tasks.
WordLift (Premium)
Best for adding structured data to WordPress sites.
WordLift automates website SEO by analyzing all content, adding structured data or schema markup to it, and making it more understandable to Google. This plugin uses artificial intelligence to identify distinct words on the site and turn them into metadata. During the process, users can manually choose which keywords are preferable, thus controlling how the website’s knowledge graphs look.
WordLift core features:
- organizing references to external sources and internal pages;
- suggesting related content to visitors leading them to archived pages and increasing user engagement this way;
- enriching text with rich snippets;
- integration with Google Data Studio tool for comprehensive analytics and reports;
- timeline, navigation, geolocation, and search widgets.
Pricing: the Starter plan costs $588 per year for one site and includes ten schema markups. The Professional and Business plans sell for $948 and $2399 per year, respectively, and they have more schema types and advanced features and can be installed on more sites.
Pros:
- attracts an audience that is more related to the site’s content;
- enhances UX with content recommendations;
- free trial for 14 days.
Cons:
- it still takes some time to learn how to use WordLift at its full capacity;
- no free version.
SEOPress (Free/Premium)
Best for optimizing large websites for search engines.
SEOPress is a powerful but lightweight WordPress plugin that allows search engine optimization of all web pages and CPTs through its interface. Unlike most other SEO plugins, SEOPress integrates with OpenAI. This feature utilizes artificial intelligence to generate SEO metadata (meta titles and descriptions) based on post content. It is especially useful for optimizing websites with hundreds of pages because it is available in bulk actions.
The plugin developers have plans to expand AI usage, so hopefully, we’ll see some new examples of how AI can improve SEO in future versions of SEOPress.
SEOPress core features:
- employs Davinci GPT-3 engine by default, but users can switch to other engines as well;
- allows optimizing multiple web pages at a time;
- highly trained models for nine languages.
Pricing: SEOPress is free, but AI integration comes with a Pro plan for $49 per year.
Pros:
- multifunctional SEO plugin that employs AI;
- affordable Pro plan.
Cons:
- AI integration is not included in the free version.
Akismet Spam Protection (Free/Premium)
Best automation tool to detect spam comments on WordPress websites.
Akismet was designed by a reputable WordPress development company Automattic to detect and block spam comments even before they are marked as pending. This tool proved to be especially effective against spam bots, and there are over five million active installations of it.
After installation on a WordPress site, Akismet is constantly improving its work thanks to machine learning algorithms. Website admins can review comments caught by Akismet and point out the spam comments that broke through the protection system, enabling it to learn from its failures.
Akismet core features:
- automatic detection of spam comments;
- integrates with WordPress plugins through Akismet API;
- provides spam detection history.
Pricing: free for non-commercial sites. Spam protection for commercial or business sites starts at $10 per month.
Pros:
- solid protection against spam by bots;
- improving SEO ranking when deleting comments with spam links;
- free for personal use.
Cons:
- most of the time not effective against human-made spam comments.
AI Engine (Free/Premium)
Best for adding a GPT-like chatbot to a WordPress site.
AI Engine is a fairly new plugin developed by Jordi Meaw that is rapidly gaining popularity. After 2000+ active installations on wordpress.org, it has only 5-star ratings, with users praising its novelty and smooth integration of AI with WordPress.
To enjoy the features of AI Engine, you’ll have to create an OpenAI key and insert it in the plugin’s settings. This allows you to add a sophisticated chatbot and content generator that rely on innovative OpenAI technologies to your website.
AI Engine core features:
- simple interface for customizing a chatbot and even giving it personality characteristics;
- ability to assign context awareness to a chatbot;
- built-in statistics to monitor OpenAI usage;
- AI Playground for translation, correction, discussions, etc.;
- internal API to link AI Engine with other plugins.
Pricing: currently, most of the AI Engine features are included in the free version. The Pro version starts at $29 per year for one site and has a statistics module and content-aware chatbots.
Pros:
- best free chatbot for WordPress;
- customization options for creating unique AI models;
- excellent support from the plugin developer.
Cons:
- some features are still in beta mode.
Quttera Web Malware Scanner (Free/Premium)
Best for detecting malware, viruses, and malicious codes using cloud technologies and artificial intelligence.
This plugin scans WordPress sites for malware, backdoors, worms, trojans, exploits, malicious iframes, malicious code injections, redirects, as well as other threats. The data is investigated on Quttera remote servers without changing any files. It also checks whether Google or other search engines blacklist your website.
Quttera Web Malware Scanner core features:
- scans for web threats in different forms;
- provides detailed investigation reports;
- learns to improve scan results by detecting false positives;
- provides blacklist status;
- detailed classification of threats in reports;
- tracks DNS attacks by monitoring DNS/IP.
Pricing: the free version is available with limited scanning options. The paid plans with a server-side malware scanner start at $120 per year for one domain.
Pros:
- offers a complex scanner for web malware that uses cloud technologies;
- feeds from the intelligence database to improve malware detection.
Cons:
- free version has limited options;
- doesn’t protect from threats, only detects them.
Bertha AI (Free/Premium)
Best for creating AI-generated product descriptions for eCommerce sites.
Using the GPT-3 language model by OpenAI, Bertha AI is among the best AI assistants built specifically for WordPress users. After the installation and activation of the plugin, you’ll see a new animated character in every text window of your website, including the backend WordPress builder. Bertha AI can provide you with multiple ideas for every task, from section titles to full-on text blocks, and saves every produced output for later reuse.
One of the strong points of Bertha AI is the automated creation of product descriptions suggesting long-tail keywords and SEO description tags, and all it needs for it is a product name.
Bertha AI core features:
- creating images based on your description;
- a content rephrasing tool;
- SEO keywords suggestions;
- 30+ pre-built content models.
Pricing: the free version lacks most of the core features. The premium version starts at $450 per year. You can also go with one-time payment options: $25 for 10,000 generated words and $15 for 100 images.
Pros:
- smooth integration with WordPress, all the major page builders, and SEO plugins;
- an abundance of AI tools for blogging;
- pay-as-you-go pricing options.
Cons:
- expensive yearly plan;
- doesn’t offer a chatbot like some other content AI WordPress plugins do.
ContentBot AI Writer (Free/Premium)
Best for writing long-form articles with an easy-to-use AI assistant.
ContentBot is another content generator using OpenAI GPT-3 natural language processing system. After installing the plugin, you can start producing new content directly within the WordPress interface. It is a great solution for bloggers to speed up content creation. You can write a few sentences, ask the plugin to continue, and delete parts you don’t like, and ContentBot will come up with a new, more relevant version. The built-in plagiarism tool will ensure you can use everything the AI created.
ContentBot core features:
- powerful paraphrasing tool;
- summarizer tool;
- instructions chatbot;
- 45 writing templates (blog intro, full blog posts, tweets, sales emails, etc.);
- rewrite tool to change the content’s tone or make content appealing to specific audiences.
Pricing: a free version with just a few features is available. Premium plans start at $29 per month. You’d have to pay $59 monthly to enjoy all premium features.
Pros:
- easy-to-use drag-n-drop post builder;
- ability to create long-form texts quickly.
Cons:
- doesn’t have an image generator;
- free and basic pro versions don’t include essential tools like plagiarism checkers.
CodeWP (Free/Premium)
Best for generating shortcodes and building complex queries in WordPress.
CodeWP is one of the best AI coding assistants for programmers and “non-technical” WordPress developers, with support for PHP and JS. With its help, users can create code snippets and complex queries that would otherwise take hours to complete.
The plugin features dozens of AI modes corresponding to specific plugins, uses, or products. The modes have different AI trained on different code bases to get accurate, high-quality snippets every time.
CodeWP core features:
- support for major plugins and page builders like WooCommerce and Elementor;
- dozens of professionally made tutorials;
- an excessive library of example snippets;
- general functions for all types and an increasing number of AI modes for specific tasks.
Pricing: the free plan allows for ten generations with a basic AI generator per month, and the Pro plan costs $96 per year.
Pros:
- new features and modes are added weekly;
- made specifically for WordPress users;
- low price for a plugin that helps solve complex problems.
Cons:
- no support for custom modes yet.
Translate WordPress – Google Language Translator (Free/Premium)
Best for adding Google AI machine translation to WordPress sites.
While the free version of this translator offers mediocre statistical machine translations, the paid version provides very accurate human-like translations into and from the English language. It stores the translated versions of your website on remote servers creating a separate domain for each language. This way, every translation is indexed, and users can find your content using their native languages.
Google Language Translator core features:
- hosting website translations;
- human-level translation quality;
- ability to manually modify translations;
- Google Analytics integration.
Pricing: the free version of this plugin is available. The paid version with all advanced features costs $400 per year.
Pros:
- improves SEO by indexing translated pages;
- high-quality neural machine translation;
- free version can be helpful.
Cons:
- to enjoy all advanced features, like translation hosting, you must buy an Enterprise plan, which is quite expensive.
Tidio – Live Chat, Chatbots & Email Integration (Free/Premium)
Best for managing emails, live chat, chatbots, and messages from one dashboard.
This plugin is an all-in-one communication solution. Its purpose is to upgrade the website’s customer service by offering various communication channels and boosting sales by providing automatic chatbots with many functional templates. It is easy to modify or even create chatbot templates from scratch using a drag-and-drop editor.
Tidio has one of the highest rankings on wordpress.org among live chat plugins, with over 100,000 active installations.
Tidio core features:
- managing all communication channels from one panel;
- chatbot templates for different situations to increase user engagement (cart saver, returning customers, etc.);
- drag-and-drug visual editor for working with chatbots;
- natural language processing (NLP) technologies to identify frequently used words and answer simple questions by the customers;
- seven-day trials on paid plans.
Pricing: most advanced features are available in the free plan, but they offer no chatbot templates and limit chatbot conversations to 100 visitors per month. The paid plans start at $190 per year.
Pros:
- advanced chatbot builder for automation sales and customer support;
- intuitive interface and management;
- free version for small businesses.
Cons:
- lacks integration with some major messengers (WhatsApp, Twitter).
YARPP – Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (Free)
Best for finding related website content and presenting it to visitors.
YARPP lets website visitors see posts, pages, and custom post types related to their original entries and finds them from across the site using advanced algorithms. It is estimated that related posts can increase page views by ten percent.
YARPP core features:
- inbuilt catching for subsequent inquiries;
- many options for placing related posts (shortcuts, blocks, widgets, REST API, and more);
- pre-built list or thumbnail templates to showcase related posts;
- compatible with all languages.
Pricing: free.
Pros:
- the most popular related posts WordPress plugin;
- fully customizable;
- free.
Cons:
- requires more server resources than similar plugins, which can be noticeable on larger sites.
ResponsiveVoice Text to Speech (Free/Premium)
Best for adding text-to-speech properties to WordPress websites.
This plugin uses a client-side HTML5 text-to-speech tool that supports over 50 languages and over 190 voices. You can activate the reading voice via buttons or by selecting the text by mouse.
ResponsiveVoice Text to Speech makes WordPress sites more accessible with such advanced features as voicing links and buttons when hovering with the mouse and complete site navigation using the keyboard.
ResponsiveVoice Text to Speech core features:
- 50+ languages supported by 190 voices;
- easy setup;
- compatible with most devices.
Pricing: the free version is fully functional but lacks some accessibility tools. The ResponsiveVoice Pro plan costs $49 per month.
Pro:
- the ability to turn text into speech in a few ways;
- many advanced features in the free version.
Cons:
- doesn’t offer a translation of the text.
GetGenie (Free/Premium)
Best for researching, writing, and optimizing content for SEO engines.
GetGenie is an AI assistant designed to accelerate the writing of high-quality original blog posts. This writing tool offers many templates to cover various frameworks, such as AIDA, BAB, and PAS. It also shows on-page SEO scores to optimize content instantly and provides valuable suggestions on creating SEO-friendly slugs.
GetGenie core features:
- 30+ templates for content writing;
- provides analysis of competitor data;
- idea generation tool for blogs;
- presenting on-page SEO score.
Pricing: the free version is available with some limitations. The paid version costs $228 per year.
Pros:
- saves time for copywriters;
- starts checking content on SEO-friendliness during the writing process;
- has a free version and a 14-day trial on paid plans.
Cons:
- offers fewer writing templates than some other content-generation tools.
Link Whisper (Free/Premium)
Best for building internal links on WordPress sites.
Link Whisper provides the easiest way to create internal links. Making intracontent connections with related posts on the website is often underused, but it may be necessary both for user engagement and improving SEO ranking. The plugin’s AI-powered engine analyses website content and suggests related posts and links in a newly created box under the written text.
Additionally, Link Whisper provides detailed reports of broken links and 404 errors.
Link Whisper core features:
- automatic link suggestions;
- in-depth link reporting;
- ability to fine-tune recommendations by deciding which keywords are relevant.
Pricing: free version is available. Paid plans add many advanced features, such as automatic and cross-site linking, costing $77 per year for one site.
Pros:
- easy-to-use;
- the free version has many useful functions.
Cons:
- no free trial on paid plans.
RankMath (Free/Premium)
Best for users who want to learn effective SEO practices.
RankMath AI-powered SEO plugin has over one million users. With its help, you can control which content is indexed and how it appears on search engines.
Multiple built-in suggestions make it easy to optimize website content and allow users to learn about the best SEO practices. Despite a large number of advanced features, its well-thought-out design and set-up wizard make RankMath easy to use, even for inexperienced users.
RankMath core features:
- 20+ pre-defined schema types;
- 30 in-depth SEO tests;
- smartlink suggestions;
- SEO-optimized breadcrumbs;
- detailed website analysis to identify SEO-related issues.
Pricing: the free version of RankMath includes many functions, and the paid version costs $59 per year and can be used on unlimited personal sites.
Pros:
- feature-rich AI-powered plugin;
- numerous suggestions and a wizard make RankMath beginner-friendly;
- reasonable price on the paid version.
Cons:
- some users report conflicts with other plugins.
What’s Next?
In November 2022, AI research company, OpenAI, launched ChatGPT – a sophisticated chatbot based on GPT-3, the company’s language model released in 2020. Two months after its launch, ChatGPT has over 30 million users sending OpenAI skyrocketing to the level of tech giants. In our article, we have already seen brand new plugins that use GPT-3 and are wildly popular (AI Engine, CodeWP), as well as renowned tools that rush to welcome this revolutionary technology aboard (SEOPress).
On February 6th, Google announced its rival AI chatbot, ‘Bard.’ So, it’s safe to say the AI arms race has begun, and it will make a major impact on content production, web development, and the online environment in general.
FAQ
What is AI?
Artificial intelligence (AI) is a simulation of human behavior during the decision-making process by machines.
What is machine learning?
Machine learning (ML) is a part of artificial intelligence that defines the capability of machines to analyze inquired data to improve their performance.
What is the purpose of WordPress AI plugins?
We often use AI plugins to create virtual assistants, text-to-speech readers, spam protection and automate website SEO.
Summary
Artificial intelligence techniques find use in various spheres of our lives. AI-powered WordPress plugins offer advanced features to accomplish different purposes.
- WordLift is an excellent solution for the automation of website SEO, and it gives the best results when combined with human-made instructions.
- AI Engine, one of the most popular applications of artificial intelligence, is creating virtual assistants which communicate with site visitors via chatbots and live chats.
- SEOPress utilizes OpenAI technologies to improve website rankings in SEO.
- The Google Language Translator plugin is the best tool for adding AI machine translators to WordPress sites.
- Quttera Web Malware Scanner is an AI-powered plugin that can find most web threats on WordPress sites.
- CodeWP is the best solution for generating shortcodes in WordPress using artificial intelligence.
- For anyone who needs to check content for SEO-friendliness, GetGenie is the best choice.
