A lot of WordPress posts, plugin pages and WordCamp talks describe AI the same way: build faster, automate more, save time, be more productive.

We got tools that let people make things they couldn’t make before, and we’re talking about workflows.

We sound like we’re selling printer toner.

AI doesn’t just make you faster. It gives you skills you never had. That’s not an upgrade. That’s a completely different thing.

Faster Is a Treadmill

At State of the Word 2025, the AI conversation was about handling “repetitive work.” WordCamp US ran sessions called “AI-Powered Publishing Workflows.” Elementor wants you to publish faster. Yoast wants to save you time on summaries.

You know what faster gets you? The same website everyone else has, sooner.

WordPress sites already look too much alike. Automattic’s design blog asked, “When was the last time you felt wowed by a new website design?” I keep thinking about that question.

Now here comes AI promising to “generate a full site in minutes.” Think about what that actually produces. The average of everything the model has ever seen. The median layout. The most probable color scheme. We took a sameness problem and handed it a turbocharger.

“Faster” without “weirder” just means more of the same.

What Actually Changed

Before AI, I’d have to pay a developer for a playful animation, personality quiz or confetti button. It was hard to justify that cost for something I just wanted to enjoy.

So you didn’t build it. Neither did anyone else. We all did the math, shrugged, and moved on. Millions of times, across millions of sites.

That math just broke.

That dice block? Eight minutes. The hover animation? Five. The personality quiz? Fifteen if you’re picky. The entire category of “I’d love that but I can’t justify it” just vanished. Not the expensive stuff; we were already building that. The interesting stuff. The stuff nobody would greenlight because it doesn’t convert, doesn’t rank, doesn’t fit in a sprint.

AI didn’t make the old work cheaper. It made new work possible. And almost nobody in WordPress is talking about that.

Proof

I can’t write code, but I’ve spent months making things with AI: a Pokémon trivia block, a confetti button, personality quizzes, star charts and scrolling tickers. I wanted them, so I tried making them.

Zero conversion value. Zero SEO benefit. Zero productivity gain. They just make sites worth visiting.

Tammie Lister spent all of October building a new Gutenberg block every day. One was a playable Tetris game inside the block editor. The Gutenberg lead clicked it and lost an hour of his life. Matt Mullenweg gave us both a shoutout on his blog.

I’d like to hear more people making this argument.

Everyone Else Gets It

Outside our bubble, this is already happening. The vibe coding movement is full of people building sites that are expressive: not optimized, not productive, just unmistakably theirs. The indie web is surging with people who are sick of algorithmic sameness and want their corners of the internet to have personality.

And WordPress? The platform built for personal publishing? The project whose entire reason for existing is democratizing the web? We’re sitting this out. We have the biggest install base, the most users who want interesting sites but can’t code, and AI tools that are ready right now.

Instead we’re writing meta descriptions 40% faster.

Build Something Stupid

I’m not talking to developers. I’m not talking to agencies. I’m talking to you: the person with a WordPress site and an idea you never built because it wasn’t “worth it.”

Build one thing this week that has zero ROI.

You run a bakery blog? Describe an animated oven timer that counts down to your next recipe post. Ten minutes. Now your site has something no other bakery blog on the planet has.

You have a classroom site? Describe a block that lets students vote on the next book with emoji reactions. Fifteen minutes. Your kids will lose their minds.

You’re a photographer? Describe images that tilt slightly when someone hovers over them, like holding a real print. Five minutes. Yours and nobody else’s.

I couldn’t justify hiring someone for some of these ideas. Now I can try them with AI for much less money and time.

That’s what excites me.

Stop building faster. Start building weirder.

I’d like more of that in WordPress.