I try to keep an open mind about generative AI. I’ve used it in the past for generating featured images on here, although I stopped over a year ago. I’ve also used ChatGPT to tackle a couple of issues that I’ve faced when I’ve not been able to find a solution using conventional means, such as the YAML code to multiply two entities in Home Assistant or how to specify IP ranges using CIDR notation.
Recent releases of WordPress have included better support for AI, including an official plugin that enables AI assistance through the WordPress admin interface. I decided to give it a try, with the AI Provider for Google plugin. Reader, I was not impressed.
The features that I enabled were:
- Auto-generation of post summaries for excerpts
- Automatic suggestions for tags to add to posts
- Automatic generation of alt text for images
Not worth it
All three features were, frankly, terrible. The post summaries over-used marketing-speak, and bore no relation to the voice I myself would use if I’d written them myself. The tag suggestions were no better than what I could think of myself, and sometimes no suggestions were made at all. And the alt text was so generic that it didn’t actually describe what was in the image. So, I’ve removed both plugins and gone back to doing everything manually.
I think the post summaries were what disappointed me the most. Having been able to digest a complete blog post that I had written, Gemini wasn’t able to summarise it using the same voice. Now, that could be an issue with the command that Gemini was being sent which may have led it to use more marketing speak, but I couldn’t find any way to amend this in the WordPress admin interface. Rewriting its summaries using the more colloquial, sarcastic and self-deprecating language that I normally use actually took longer than just writing them myself from scratch.
Maybe in a couple of years, I’ll revisit this to find that the AI models have improved, and can better mimic the way I write. If you’re using WordPress on a commercial site, then perhaps it will work for you. But for now, I’ll stick to doing things manually.
