351 – The one where the entire episode was created by AI

[00:00:00] Nathan Wrigley: Hello there, and welcome once again to the WP Builds podcast, you have reached episode number 351, entitled the one where the entire episode was created by AI. It was published on Thursday, the 23rd of November, 2023.

My name's Nathan Wrigley, and I'll be joined in a few moments by my good friend David Waumsley, so that we can plumb some new depths on the WP Builds podcast, stay tuned. It will be a lot of fun.

Before that a few bits of housekeeping. The first thing to mention is that black Friday clearly is around the corner. Well, in fact, it's upon us. You've got a few days left to find all of those WordPressy Black Friday deals. Honestly, I've got the best place for you to go for all of that.

Head to WP Builds.com forward slash black. Once more WP Builds.com forward slash black. Find well over 300 curated WordPress deals. It is searchable and filterable. Go there, bookmark that page and you will be able to experience significant reductions on your WordPress plugins, themes, hosting blocks, and all of that good stuff. WP Builds.com. Forward slash black.

The other thing to mention is we are on the lookout for some advertisers, as you might imagine, the WP Builds podcast has a fairly significant audience. If you would like to get your message, product, service out in front of the WP Builds audience, head to WP Builds.com forward slash advertise, and fill out the form there, or just get in touch with the channels mentioned.

The other thing to mention is obviously we do our, this week in WordPress show every Monday, 2:00 PM, UK time. We're also doing a Thursday show with Sabrina Zeidan. That's called speed it up, and it's a live show showing how you can speed up your website, one process at a time. We're also doing a bunch of webinars with Leo Losoviz, they're to come in the near future, and various other bits and pieces as well. The best place to find out about those is to head to WP Builds.com, the homepage of our website, scroll down a little bit, and there's a black horizontal section called coming up, and you'll be able to see what's happening. And there are calendar links there as well. We'd love you to come every time we do something live it's WP Builds.com forward slash live. And if you join us, you can make some comments and we really do appreciate that.

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Right, what have we got for you today? Well, we have something truly unique. It is episode 351. It's called the one where the entire episode was created by AI, and guess what? That's exactly what it is.

You have to have lived under a rock if you haven't seen the tidal wave of AI that is sweeping the world. It can do almost anything, create images, transcribe audio, in fact it can create podcast episodes. And so that's what we did today.

We gave it some fairly generic prompts based upon what we think you would like to hear as an audience about WP products and services, topics around the WordPress space. We fed that into different AI engines and we literally read out the results. Some of it's brilliant. Some of it is farcical. It's certainly as plumbing new depths. We kind of intersperse it, we did four of these, so we kind of treat each one as a separate episode.

It really was a whole lot of fun. We've got AI created show notes. AI created music at the end. AI created content. What more could you possibly want? I hope that you (don't) enjoy it.

[00:05:07] David Waumsley: Hello, it's the penultimate episode of our thinking the unthinkable series. This one we've called AI wrote this episode and our next episode will take us to 21 episodes, which seems probably enough of the unthinkable topics, but it's left us with a few titles, which we've never got round to because they're either too controversial or they'll be on our ability.

So Nathan. notice how I'm distancing myself from this. I thought it would be fun if we got AI to write the scripts for us for a giggle and just cover some of these other topics.

[00:05:40] Nathan Wrigley: this is going to be hysterical. so I'm sure there'll be some laughs in this and I'm sure it'll get misdirected at times, but we are literally going to give AI. topics and then just read what it says. We're not even going to read them beforehand. So whatever we get is what we get. So if it turns out to be incredibly authoritative, great.

My suspicion is it's going to get derailed fairly quickly, but yeah. Do you want to just explain how your. How you're prompting.

[00:06:15] David Waumsley: Yeah, really, I've got no clue how to prompt this is where the main skill isn't it these days with AI, but we've given it this one, which is please create a script for one episode of a WordPress podcast called WP Builds. And the topic for this one is and we're going to swap out the title because we've got a few of these and the rest of it says there are two hosts.

Nathan and David, and an audience, sorry, and the audience are people who are experienced with using WordPress. Episodes normally last 45 minutes, and content is technical, practical, and philosophical. I'm sure anybody who's listened to this knows this is a bit of a lie. The audience is in awe of the depth of knowledge Nathan and David possess.

Of course, that's true. They never give misinformation and are charming and funny. So that's the prompt. Yeah.

[00:07:07] Nathan Wrigley: So you can get all of that in as a prompt, right? So that was about, that's probably about, I don't know, 70, 80, 100 words or

[00:07:15] David Waumsley: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:07:15] Nathan Wrigley: you're going to put the same prompt in every time, but the only bit that you're going to change is the title of the specific episode. in order to not bore you, I guess we'll turn off the recording whilst it creates the actual content.

And then we're going to paste it into a Google doc and just read it out. Yeah. Okay. So you won't have to sit here listening to it, listening to us doing the copy and pasting, but apart from that, you're, we're just going to

[00:07:44] David Waumsley: Yeah.

[00:07:44] Nathan Wrigley: read out what we get. Okay.

[00:07:46] David Waumsley: to be painful because I freeze as soon as I got something to read anyway.

[00:07:50] Nathan Wrigley: Okay. Okay. that'll be part of the fun. okay. So we've got two guests. It's a WP Builds podcast episode. It's about WordPress 45 minutes long. I bet it doesn't get the timing right, 'cause it, my, my understanding is that it's not very good at judging the length of things in, even in terms of words.

so what was the first one called again? What We get pushing in.

[00:08:13] David Waumsley: we've got a bunch of topics here. The first one we thought we'd go for is should WordPress plugins and themes? Something which I've been getting it to do for me recently. So I thought I'd ask it what its thought is on this.

[00:08:24] Nathan Wrigley: Okay. So that's gonna be the first one. we'll plumb it into one of the G P T engines, one of the chat engines and, yeah. We'll, see you on the other side.

[00:08:34] David Waumsley: Okay. The first one we've done, I've put into chat GPT, the free version, which I think is version three. And it's given us the title WP builds episode 42, because we didn't give it any clue, AI powered WordPress plugins and themes, a technical revolution.

So Nathan, it's up to you to bring in the introduction.

Welcome to another exciting episode of WP Builds, the podcast where we explore the fascinating world of WordPress. I'm your host, Nathan, and with me as always is the brilliant David. I would never say that. Today we're diving deep into the realm of artificial intelligence and its impact on creating WordPress plugins and themes.

[00:09:40] David Waumsley: That's right, Nathan. I was about to say that. We'll explore the technical, practical, and even philosophical aspects of leveraging AI for our beloved WordPress sites. But before we unravel this topic, let's take a moment to thank our sponsor. Sponsor name.

[00:10:02] Nathan Wrigley: that's

[00:10:03] David Waumsley: South London.

[00:10:04] Nathan Wrigley: even added in a sponsor section. okay, absolutely. Now, let's embark on this AI powered journey to transform our WordPress experience.

[00:10:15] David Waumsley: Segment one, the rise of AI in WordPress development. I don't know who's supposed to say that because we haven't got the name against that, but it's me folks in artificial intelligence is shaping the way we interact with technology. And guess what? WordPress is no exception.

[00:10:31] Nathan Wrigley: true, David. AI is becoming a powerful tool for developers to streamline their workflows. Imagine an AI that can analyze your website and suggest the most... Suitable plugins and themes based on your content and behavior. Behaviors incorrectly spelt by the way,

[00:10:48] David Waumsley: Mind blowing, isn't it? AI can enhance user experience through personalized content recommendations and optimized design.

[00:10:57] Nathan Wrigley: segment two, debunking misconceptions. Now, before our audience raises any eyebrows, let's address some misconceptions about AI in WordPress.

[00:11:09] David Waumsley: You got it. First off, AI isn't here to replace developers. It's here to empower them. It'll save time and automate repetitive tasks, giving developers more room for creativity.

[00:11:21] Nathan Wrigley: Precisely! And rest assured, we're not talking about AI gone rogue here. The AI tools available for WordPress are well tested and secure, offering a reliable addition to your toolbox.

[00:11:35] David Waumsley: Segment three. I don't know who's supposed to say this. We should have a little announcer. AI practice, sorry, AI in practice, practical applications. So Nathan, how can our experienced WordPress users practically leverage AI for plugins and themes?

[00:11:51] Nathan Wrigley: I'm glad you asked, David. Imagine an AI powered code generator that takes your design preferences and builds a custom theme for you. True.

[00:12:01] David Waumsley: and let's not forget about AI generated content, like automated copywriting for landing pages or blog posts. It can save hours of writing and editing.

[00:12:11] Nathan Wrigley: And how about AI driven performance optimization? Our websites will be faster and more efficient than ever before. I'll do the next one. So segment four, AI versus human creativity.

[00:12:25] David Waumsley: But Nathan, do you think AI could take away the creative essence of WordPress development?

[00:12:31] Nathan Wrigley: Oh, it's an excellent point, David. And while AI can handle repetitive tasks, the spark of creativity will always come from human minds. AI is a tool to amplify our creative potential, not replace it.

[00:12:45] David Waumsley: Absolutely. And as we know, you and I are the creative minds, right?

[00:12:50] Nathan Wrigley: I've got to laugh here. Ah ha Of course, David!

[00:12:57] David Waumsley: Segment 5, AI's impact on the WordPress community. Oh, it's me. AI has significant implications for the WordPress community as

[00:13:07] Nathan Wrigley: Oh, indeed. It can lead to a more inclusive ecosystem, making it easier for non technical users to create their websites with AI's assistance.

[00:13:16] David Waumsley: And don't forget about the potential for cost reduction. AI can bring down development expenses, benefiting both the developer and clients.

[00:13:25] Nathan Wrigley: Segment 6, Challenges. And the road ahead. While AI brings exciting possibilities, it's essential to acknowledge the challenges it may present.

[00:13:37] David Waumsley: One major concern is data privacy and security. As we embrace AI, we must ensure that our users data remains protected.

[00:13:45] Nathan Wrigley: absolutely, David. And we need to consider the ethical implications too, ensuring transparency and accountability with AI generated content will be crucial.

[00:13:56] David Waumsley: Conclusion. Oh, it's me. It's incredible to see how AI is revolutionizing WordPress plugins and themes.

[00:14:05] Nathan Wrigley: Oh, indeed, David. The future is bright. And as always, the WordPress community will adapt and

[00:14:13] David Waumsley: Thanks to our awe inspiring audience for joining us today. Remember, stay curious, keep learning, and embrace the wonders of AI in your WordPress journey.

[00:14:24] Nathan Wrigley: thrive. Until next time, happy WordPressing. And then, it says we've got to fade in some music, so I'll, actually do that. I will fade in some music there. Do you, should we, just talk about what we thought about that?

[00:14:38] David Waumsley: Yeah,

[00:14:38] Nathan Wrigley: think we should do, let's do that. okay, there we go. there's the first one.

We're going to probably have three or four more, no, three or four in total. So maybe two or three more. what did you make of that?

[00:14:51] David Waumsley: it was, such fun to read actually, , because, yeah, because it does a really good job at creating a, sort of, well, I guess most of the podcasts that are out there have a American tinge. We're a little bit more sedate, aren't we, in the way that we are. we haven't got that natural positivity that, that is.

In this script here where, everybody looks forward, but so the interactions are quite fun to play around with because it's not how we might normally interact. But the substance wasn't really there, was

[00:15:23] Nathan Wrigley: No, that was the thing that I was thinking as we were reading through it. Yeah, it was really to and fro. So everything was in little two sentence blocks. So it was you and then me. But also, we had to, there was a little beginning. There was always a word at the beginning of the sentence, wasn't there? absolutely, mind blowing.

That's true. You got it, which is not how we behave at all. So maybe in the next prompt, we need to add something in to, to prevent that. But you're right. There was. There was almost nothing in there that you could get your teeth into. There was no real content. It was just a bunch of blandishments.

That's what I thought, anyway.

[00:15:58] David Waumsley: Yeah, absolutely. And because it is something I have been doing, I have been making some, an SEO plugin, using AI and it did a really good job and it very much helped me to put together the theme stuff. So I've been actually losing it and, know some of the actual real pros and cons of doing it. You know what it's good at and what it's not.

so good at it is very good, particularly if you're sticking, I think with the very standardized PHP stuff that's been around for so many years of which has gone through all of the plugins and learn all of that stuff, it really can do a fabulous job.

[00:16:30] Nathan Wrigley: And it didn't point us in that direction at all, did it? It didn't give us any guidance on where we could look. The fact that you might be thinking about PHP. There was no indication of how to how to go about doing that. But then I guess the title AI powered WordPress plugins and themes, a technical revolution.

It got a bit derailed, didn't it? Considering we didn't quite give it that title. We gave it why we should get AI to create our. WordPress, maybe the word why in that was the, problem. If we'd have put how we, how to get AI to create WordPress plugins and themes, maybe that would have given us a different output.

[00:17:08] David Waumsley: Yeah, absolutely. Maybe it would have done. Maybe it was how is better. We might have to change some of our titles.

[00:17:14] Nathan Wrigley: will press pause and we'll go away and we'll come up with the next title and we'll be back in just a moment.

Okay, we're back. This, is Section 2, Part 2. It's our second run, anyway. We did something slightly different this time. We've changed the parameters, having had a little chat after the previous one finished. what I've done is, instead of going to ChatGPT, I'm trying out a new one that I've come across.

[00:18:00] Nathan Wrigley: It's called Claude. ai. C L A U D E dot A I. It's run by a... An organization called Anthropic. My understanding is that Anthropic are big players in this space, but then, they don't in any way have the notoriety that, that ChatGPT does, but the prompt that I used was basically the same, but I've substituted a different title and the title I've put in for this one is should wordpress.

org. Have elected leadership, but then I've added in at the end, I've added in Nathan and David are both British and don't typically use enthusiastic language. Now I added that in because there was a lot of stuff in the previous one, which didn't sound like us, the awesome and all that kind of stuff.

But because this is a new AI. Who knows? Because it won't have the previous, episode to go on. So we'll just have to see how it works out. I've copy and pasted that into the script. Let's go for it.

[00:19:02] David Waumsley: Yeah, it starts with you.

[00:19:04] Nathan Wrigley: Okay. Welcome to another episode of WP Builds, the podcast for WordPress. Professionals. I'm, I can't even read.

I'm going to start again. Welcome to another episode of WP builds the podcast for WordPress professionals. That's hard to say. I'm Nathan.

[00:19:22] David Waumsley: And I'm David. Today's topic is an interesting one. Should WordPress. org have elected leadership?

[00:19:28] Nathan Wrigley: Definitely a timely discussion given the recent chatter in the community. Let's dive right in. Shall we?

[00:19:35] David Waumsley: Indeed, currently WordPress. org is led by co founder Matt Mullenweg along with the core leadership team. There's been debate around whether an elected model could be beneficial.

[00:19:48] Nathan Wrigley: WordPress being open source. Some argue that having leadership democratically elected by the community may be a more representative model. What are your thoughts on this, David?

[00:20:00] David Waumsley: there's merits to both approaches in my view. On one hand, being driven by a consistent vision from Matt and the core team has undoubtedly been key to WordPress growth. And frankly, their leadership has served the project very well over the years.

[00:20:20] Nathan Wrigley: Can't argue with the results, WordPress is certainly flourishing, though an election model could be seen as more inclusive of the broader contributor community.

[00:20:30] David Waumsley: Fair point. Though there's the risk of leadership becoming fragmented without unified direction, overall sense, a census, and a concept, sorry, I said you would have to teach me to read to do this, and a velocity of development could suffer in an elected model.

[00:20:48] Nathan Wrigley: That is a good counterpoint. Though proponents of elected leadership might say that distributed decision making allows for more diverse perspectives. Okay, now the script kind of goes off the rails a little bit. Okay, what's this? So it, really it should hand over to David at this point, but it doesn't.

It says the following, I'll just read it out. Main body. Oh, okay. The conversation would continue, diving deeper into the nuances on both sides of the argument. and then there's six bullet points which I'll just read out. The risk of politics and infighting in an elected model. The need for transparency and community involvement in leadership decisions.

Evaluating governance models of other open source projects. Does the pace of innovation suffer without a consistent singular vision? Could elections increase diversity in leadership? Striking the right balance between decision, sorry, direction and community feedback. Okay, that's the end of the bullet points.

Then it says, Nathan and David would have an insightful, it really doesn't know us, Nathan and David would have an insightful back and forth exploring the topic from multiple angles, citing examples and data points. The tone is thoughtful but light hearted with some, wry British humour sprinkled in.

They acknowledge merits of both approaches without outright endorsing. And then conclusion. Oh, we're back to the script now, so it's you again.

[00:22:12] David Waumsley: yeah, we'll finish off this and then we'll go back to that actually. so well, Nathan, I think we've thoroughly examined this issue from all sides, as we often do, it seems there are reasonable arguments on both

[00:22:25] Nathan Wrigley: I concur, David. There's benefits as well as potential pitfalls to either approach. I don't expect we'll come to an undisputed resolution today, nor would that be very exciting. Dear listeners.

[00:22:39] David Waumsley: To write perhaps the ideal path forward incorporates facets of both models, but I think the robustness of this debate reflects WordPress's strength as an open source community platform.

[00:22:51] Nathan Wrigley: Oh, here, I can't believe it says that here, the freedom to have these discussions is what makes WordPress so compelling. That's all we have time for on this episode of WP builds. My friends. We hope the conversation was as intriguing for you as it was for us.

[00:23:08] David Waumsley: Indeed, please do keep the discussion going and share your perspectives. Join us next time when we nerd out over all things WordPress. Chimeo,

[00:23:18] Nathan Wrigley: Cheerio everyone.

[00:23:22] David Waumsley: lovely.

[00:23:22] Nathan Wrigley: lovely. do

[00:23:24] David Waumsley: Tally ho and Toodle pip. That's not

[00:23:26] Nathan Wrigley: So we will, we'll be back. We'll just discuss this one and then we'll go and do another one. That was. That was really interesting. The first thing to notice is it got into a script pretty quickly, but then in the middle broke off and basically said, you humans do the work.

So it just gave us some talking points and then left us to it. That's interesting in and of itself.

[00:23:47] David Waumsley: I think actually this is pretty good, actually. I think it's better than ChatGPT for doing something like that. Because actually it does say, look, you can give you some idea about how the flavor might go for it. But when it comes to it, here's some of the things you really should discuss so you balance everything out.

And I thought, actually, it's quite a good guide

[00:24:03] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, considering we gave it this prompt, should wordpress. org have elected leadership? So it figured out that Matt Mullenweg was a co founder and that there's a core leadership team. It figured out that there's a debate about, whether there should be, an election process. And it figured out that there are pros and cons and it laid all of those out for us.

I think that's actually pretty remarkable.

[00:24:28] David Waumsley: Yeah, it didn't do a bad job. I thought that was quite good. and actually, from it, I think it had some more depth to it than chat GPT on the last question that he did, because it gave us nothing really about what we were asking, why we might want to. Use AI. And in this case, it actually did make me think, yeah, there are pros and cons with this one, a singular vision from one person against, a cooperation, if you like trying to come to decisions.

yeah, I,

[00:24:56] Nathan Wrigley: raising things like the risk of politics and infighting, the need for transparency, evaluating open source project, other open source projects. this is fascinating. Honestly, you could, we could have used that, not as an episode, because it doesn't sound anything like us, but we totally could have used what came out of there as the basis for our show notes, I reckon.

[00:25:19] David Waumsley: yeah, I think so. And in some ways it's partly what we would do in a way, but maybe it's just useful to have somebody else say, cause we forget stuff, don't we? We think we're putting in all sorts of sides, but we're not. We're lead towards what we know.

[00:25:33] Nathan Wrigley: yeah, and

[00:25:34] David Waumsley: yeah, I like

[00:25:35] Nathan Wrigley: interesting as well that we put in the prompt, if let me just read the exact phrasing that I put in there. I put, Nathan and David are both British and don't typically use enthusiastic language. it did stray into that a little bit, but it, definitely gave it a British tint because, at one point I had to say, here, and then cheerio right at the end.

Yeah, fascinating.

[00:25:57] David Waumsley: At some point I'd be saying, I refer my honorable gentlemen to the answer I gave some moments

[00:26:02] Nathan Wrigley: moments ago. If you're not British, you won't get that at all. so we'll press pause, we'll fire up another one, and we'll come back and explain how that all works. I'll, I'll pause the recording.

so we're back with the next one, which, the title for this one is Gutenberg versus the classic editor, which is best. And we've used Bing chat, which I think is their version based on chat GPT version four. That's my understanding. So I've actually. I've actually pasted it into my browser here.

[00:26:54] David Waumsley: So it's a little chat extension that's added on. And it's given us quite a long script here, but it's the same prompt as we had before, without the addition that Nathan put on last time about our Britishness. So this might sound a little bit more American, but we haven't read it yet, have we? So we'll find out.

[00:27:10] Nathan Wrigley: but being chat, it's, we're expecting this to be like chat GPT because in, sorry, yeah, chat GPT. Cause in effect it's the same engine we think. Okay.

[00:27:20] David Waumsley: we think, yeah, except it's the version on, I think, and their own adjustments have been made for it. Cause it's, it's supposed to give you extra additions, like where you might be able to go for further information

[00:27:31] Nathan Wrigley: Just interestingly, just quickly glancing at the script. It's, it's given us like titles, but nobody is supposed to say the titles. So I'll just put those in the show notes, but we won't read those out. We'll just keep reading what it's telling us to read. Okay. Alright then. I think you, is it me first?

Oh, it is

[00:27:48] David Waumsley: it is.

[00:27:48] Nathan Wrigley: Okay, here we go. Hello and welcome to the WP Builds podcast. I'm Nathan and I'm here with David. Today we're talking, sorry, today we're going to talk about Gutenberg versus the Classic Editor. Which is best?

[00:28:06] David Waumsley: Hi everyone. This is David. I'm excited to talk about this topic today.

[00:28:10] Nathan Wrigley: So David, let's start with Gutenberg. What is it?

[00:28:15] David Waumsley: Gutenberg is the name given to a new paradigm of WordPress editing. It's a system that brought a rapid revolution in the field of web content creation. After the new Gutenberg editor replaced the old WordPress classic editor as the default editor of WordPress.

[00:28:33] Nathan Wrigley: That's interesting. Can you tell us more about it?

[00:28:38] David Waumsley: Sure, blocks are the new tools to convert your ideas into media rich content using the drag and drop interface. You can now turn into a blogger overnight. No need to have prior experience with technology as it was with the classic WordPress editor.

[00:28:59] Nathan Wrigley: And what about the Classic Editor? This is

[00:29:04] David Waumsley: the classic editor is the old editor that was used before Gutenberg was introduced. It's a simple text editor that's similar to Microsoft Word.

[00:29:15] Nathan Wrigley: great! This is an interview! I'm just asking questions! It's brilliant! You're doing all the work! So why did WordPress introduce Gutenberg?

[00:29:25] David Waumsley: Gutenberg is an attempt by WordPress to keep pace with the rapidly growing DIY trend. It is an editing system for everyone. All the blocks are so self explanatory that anyone can create amazing content with a few, clicks using the drag and drop interface.

[00:29:44] Nathan Wrigley: easy for you to say. What are some of the main advantages of using Gutenberg? I love this! I'm doing nothing! It's great!

[00:29:53] David Waumsley: the main, there are many advantages of using Gutenberg over the classic editor. First of all, it's more flexible and easier to use than the classic editor. You can create beautiful pages using a page builder like Elementor. But Gutterberg can create readable blog posts using images, embedded URLs, and a lot more, making readers want to stay on your site, on the site, sorry.

[00:30:19] Nathan Wrigley: It's okay. That sounds great! What else?

[00:30:24] David Waumsley: Another advantage of using Gutterberg is that it is compatible with almost all of the free WordPress themes available in the market today.

[00:30:34] Nathan Wrigley: So how does Gutenberg compare to the Classic Editor?

[00:30:39] David Waumsley: There are many differences between the two editors. The major difference between them is that Gutenberg makes use of the drag and drop interface, while Classic Editor does not.

[00:30:52] Nathan Wrigley: That's interesting.

[00:30:56] David Waumsley: Another difference between them is that Gutenberg offers more flexibility with its blocks based approach, while Classic Editor employs an older WYSIWYG format without built in layout customization features.

[00:31:13] Nathan Wrigley: What else? Sorry, I'm just loving the fact that I'm doing nothing and you're doing everything.

[00:31:20] David Waumsley: I know

[00:31:20] Nathan Wrigley: Here we go. What are some of the benefits of using Gutenberg?

[00:31:26] David Waumsley: there are many benefits of using Guttenberg over classic editor. First of all, it is more flexible and easy to use than classic editor. I want to put the before that, you can create beautiful pages using a page builder like saying the same thing, isn't it Elementor? Gutenberg can create readable blog posts using images, embedded URLs.

And we just repeated ourselves. We have

[00:31:53] Nathan Wrigley: But yeah, come on,

[00:31:54] David Waumsley: Yeah, making the reader want to stay, on your site.

[00:31:59] Nathan Wrigley: That sounds great. What else?

[00:32:03] David Waumsley: Another benefit of using Gutenberg is that it's compatible. We are repeating ourselves here with almost all of the free WordPress themes available on the market today.

[00:32:12] Nathan Wrigley: so we're really near the end now. Okay, so there you have it, folks. We've talked about Gutenberg versus Classic Editor. Which one is best? We hope this episode has been informative for you.

[00:32:24] David Waumsley: Thanks for listening, everyone.

[00:32:26] Nathan Wrigley: Oh my word, that was, that, sorry I kept laughing there because it cast me in the role of, I was just asking, what is it?

What do you think? What else? That's basically all I had to do there, whereas you had the majority, but it just repeated the same thing over and over again.

[00:32:45] David Waumsley: Yes, it didn't it? It literally was. My answer was exactly the same for two of the answers, of those ones, the same and yeah, it's, what it forced me to do as not

[00:32:58] Nathan Wrigley: I know I was thinking that I was thinking these are going to be great little sound bites they're basically putting words into your mouth that you don't believe but Interestingly though it did at least it wasn't totally ridiculous. Was it? It did give us context It explained what Gutenberg was it did explain what the classic editor was factually?

I don't think it got anything incorrect in that regard. But yeah, I think it quickly ran out of steam And then just kept saying the same thing over and over again, but, I, I think if we were to actually make that, we would just cut the bottom half out, and it would have probably worked.

[00:33:35] David Waumsley: Yeah, it's a little bit mixed in its messaging because on one hand it alluded to the fact that it is potentially an alternative things like, Elementor, which it is, but it also then very much focused on the fact that suddenly allow people to do blogging, which as if the classic editor wasn't and in some ways you think, actually the main switch is perhaps it's getting you more into So page builder, typical, irregular sites than it is blogging with the, the switch over to Gutenberg from classic editor where classic editor really, it was best for just blogging, wasn't it?

So I felt it got a bit confused

[00:34:08] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So that's the third section. We'll, we'll hit pause and we'll come back with the final section and we'll tell you what the title is and what we're going to use. I'll be back in a minute.

so the last one that we're going to do, which is our fourth one, we've put into Google Bard, and it's a topic that we thought we were going to do, but we just shied away because it's too Okay, so we Too political and too, we're out of our depth with it. And it is, is WordPress too woke?

[00:34:59] David Waumsley: So we've given this one to Google Bard with the same prompt that Nathan, gave earlier. It's the one that we started with the extra addition that we're both British and don't typically use enthusiastic language. So Nathan, you have to kick it

[00:35:13] Nathan Wrigley: Okay, here we go. Welcome to WP Builds, the podcast for WordPress developers and enthusiasts. I'm Nathan.

[00:35:22] David Waumsley: And I'm David.

[00:35:23] Nathan Wrigley: Today, we're talking about a topic that's been on a lot of people's minds lately. Is WordPress too woke?

[00:35:31] David Waumsley: That's a loaded question, isn't it?

[00:35:33] Nathan Wrigley: It is, but it's one that's worth discussing. Because it's something that's going to have an impact on the future of WordPress.

[00:35:40] David Waumsley: So what do you mean by woke?

[00:35:43] Nathan Wrigley: is WordPress becoming too focused on social justice and political correctness? Is it becoming less welcoming to people who don't share those views?

[00:35:52] David Waumsley: I see. I think it's important to remember that WordPress is a community driven project. That means the direction of the project is ultimately up to the people who use

it.

[00:36:04] Nathan Wrigley: and the WordPress community is a diverse one. There are people from all walks of life with all sorts of different beliefs.

[00:36:11] David Waumsley: So it's inevitable, but there will be some disagreement about what direction WordPress should take. But I think that's a good thing. It means that the project is constantly evolving and improving.

[00:36:24] Nathan Wrigley: I agree. But I also think it's important to be mindful of the fact that not everyone is going to be happy with every decision that's made.

[00:36:31] David Waumsley: That's true, but I think as long as WordPress, the WordPress community remains open and welcoming, we'll be able to find a way to move forward together.

[00:36:42] Nathan Wrigley: what do you think? Is WordPress too woke?

[00:36:46] David Waumsley: I don't think so. I think WordPress is a great platform for everyone regardless of their beliefs.

[00:36:51] Nathan Wrigley: I agree. And I think the best way to ensure that WordPress remains a welcoming platform for everyone is to continue to have these conversations.

[00:36:59] David Waumsley: I couldn't agree more.

[00:37:00] Nathan Wrigley: Thanks for listening to WPBuilds. We'll be back next time with more WordPress news and discussion.

[00:37:07] David Waumsley: Until then, happy building.

[00:37:10] Nathan Wrigley: Okay, that was interesting. Okay, so firstly, that was very short. but it, and it, did the same trick as we had, but in reverse last time, you were the one asking all the questions and I was the one, coming up with the answer. So it's interesting that the AI casts that as a, it's an interview, isn't it?

It has an interviewer. And somebody answering the question. So that in itself is quite interesting. I'm guessing that it's, there's, something programmed into the algorithm so that it doesn't, give any controversial opinions. I don't know whether, what you think about that, but it definitely it touched lightly on the subject at hand, didn't it?

and tried to, be economists all the time.

[00:37:56] David Waumsley: Yeah. It really didn't touch on, you didn't try to, it's a disputed term anyway, the, history of woke and how it's been used in the context. really tried to just bypass that and really just got to the fact that, it's a diverse community and it's all about getting along together and, and that's it.

And it really did nothing. He didn't really go. Anything into what might be considered as the topic of being too woke or not. Yeah.

[00:38:23] Nathan Wrigley: Okay. So that was, that was Google's Bard.

[00:38:27] David Waumsley: Yeah, I loved it. It was so cheery and optimistic, but of course, absolutely mindless, wasn't

[00:38:33] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, that's, David, this history, the history of this podcast is, it anything but that, I'm going to, I'm going to press pause. Maybe we'll go and have a little chat and then we'll come back in just a moment and we'll round off what our final thoughts are. How does that sound?

[00:38:49] David Waumsley: Okay, great.

[00:39:11] David Waumsley: Okay. So we ought to summarize on what we've just been doing. So we've done four of these with four different AI models. And we've got to be honest. we don't know how to prompt engineer at all. So our prompts may be very useless, useless to the different models. But, what did you get from it Nathan?

[00:39:30] Nathan Wrigley: I'll tell you what I got. Primarily, it was a good laugh.

was, I laughed quite a lot during some of those. It was, I think a podcaster is safe at this point. That's my primary conclusion is, if you ask it to go into a subject, sure enough, given the right question, it can give you prompts.

But I think one of the things is. it's not really good at writing scripts. It certainly seems to lean into a style of language which you and I probably would never be comfortable actually reading out. So there'd be quite a lot of amending there. we just don't begin sentences like that and we don't hand off sentences in that way.

so there's that. The script would need looking at. But also, I thought that the Claude one, I think that was the second one that we did, did the best job at. Given the prompt, what I mean by that is we asked it for a podcast episode and it did that. It introduced it, it gave us some talking points, which I thought were okay.

I was giggling a lot, but then it handed off to the humans and said, Here's what you should talk about now and then gave us some options for concluding. So it didn't, it wasn't comfortable doing the whole script. It was, okay, you humans need to be involved. And some of the points that it put in on the screen that we should have been talking about, we're actually pretty much on message.

So yeah, I thought chat, GPT, Bard and the Bing version. I think they were beaten in this little battle by Claude. ai.

[00:41:06] David Waumsley: Indeed. Actually, my part of it is now I just want to talk like these whole scripts have been given me. Indeed, I couldn't agree more,

[00:41:12] Nathan Wrigley: Oh, here,

[00:41:14] David Waumsley: yeah,

[00:41:15] Nathan Wrigley: here. Bravo. Fine, sir. Yeah.

[00:41:19] David Waumsley: no, you're right. I think it's, yeah, they couldn't write the scripts. I felt none of them had particularly. cover the topic that you wanted.

I think, the Wokie didn't discuss it. It didn't really tell us anything about how you might use, how you might build with the AI plugins or anything that might be at all useful. It was a chat around the topic rather than into it. But Claude, I thought actually maybe because of the nature of the question that It was given, which was about sort of leadership.

Generally, it just gives us some pointers about how that might be done to talk about and handed it over. So I agree it was the most useful of the lot and the others didn't give really, they just gave something that sounded like a sort of podcast, but without the content,

[00:42:03] Nathan Wrigley: it will probably turn out that this episode is the most popular episode we've ever made. will, in some way, be a little bit demoralizing. But it really does tell me that if you are making audio content... You are not in trouble, just yet. If that were to be put out, and a human was to read it, or a robot was to read that, I suspect that you'd get one episode in, and you would probably never return.

Because there was nothing to get your teeth into there, was there?

[00:42:32] David Waumsley: No, interesting. I don't think I mentioned this while we were on the air, but before I was talking about recently, I was using it for research. So I've given up with it, trying to write too much for me. So I really wanted some interesting facts for a client, for some blog posts. and, It really, and what I wanted it to do, the research I wanted it to do is about solar energy and I wanted it to come out with interesting facts that might not generally be featured elsewhere that were, British in their nature for the intended audience and it gave me what looked like fabulous research and the first one that I saw that I thought, That's not right.

It said the airport was Birmingham for first solar powered airport. And I knew that not to be true. And it took that all eight of these wonderful bits of that I thought were great topics, all were untrue entirely

[00:43:28] Nathan Wrigley: So a hundred percent of what it gave back...

[00:43:32] David Waumsley: yeah, and I think when we've tested it on this general. Chat, pretty much all of them have avoided really committing themselves to anything that factual,

[00:43:43] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, that's true. Interestingly though, it didn't put its foot in it. as an example, it, it, it didn't confuse what WordPress is. It didn't get the founder of WordPress wrong. It did get what the classic editor is right. And it may have misaligned that a little bit, but it seems that if you're off, if you're asking it to tell the truth and dig out facts, you might be on shaky ground.

But this. This is definitely better than that. This did give us content and it was, broadly speaking, I think, accurate. Whether or not it was interesting is debatable. Whether or not we're ever actually interesting in the real world is equally debatable. But it didn't misdirect that badly. And so it feels like if you're after some kind of prose, it feels like it's better at that than just giving.

Factually correct information.

[00:44:37] David Waumsley: It is funny when we started this, unthinkable series, we actually quickly, cause it just burst on the scene, chat GPT, and we were talking about many our fears and, how wonderful it was. And I don't know, over this period of time, do you think for you, the AI as, the threat of it, has that declined a bit for you?

[00:44:57] Nathan Wrigley: I still worry about people misusing it. So deliberately, I don't know, let's say just flooding the landscape with just bogus content or just even just content, which is just there for SEO. So I worry about that whole attention shattering problem on the internet. There's just too much content out there, but also people misusing it.

So deliberately creating content to, to pull the wool over our eyes. I don't know whether that's about. Politics or whatever it may be creating content that is deliberately to confuse us or to muddy the waters in certain issues. So that worries me, but no, I think as time has gone on, I'm getting a little bit less freaked out because I think we're starting to learn.

I don't mean you and humanity is beginning to have a little bit more of an understanding of what its role really is, and I think that role is augmenting, or the phrase I keep hearing is a co pilot. it's sitting there. Giving you some ideas. And I think the best example that we got today, that Claude AI one, it did do that.

It gave us something and then it said, now on, off you go. Now you talk about it. And it, but it did give me some ideas. I don't think we would have come up with those ideas. We would have come up with different ones. But that would have been a good starting point.

[00:46:19] David Waumsley: I've certainly learned over the time what it's good and not good at, and it missed the opportunity with the first chat GT one to talk about the, the fact that it does have all this information about WebPress plugins and pretty stable setup for the P H P side of it. It might struggle a bit more with the ever changing sort of Gutenberg react stuff, but, but on that it does a really good job on it, underplayed it, but interesting.

two of the engines we're using here are. Google's barred and we're also using Bing's chat as well, which are in the search. And that was another concern is search dead, and we were talking just before this, where my own view on this one is, I don't want to stretch this topic out, but that I think Google seemed to be, I was watching some SEO talk about their, the importance they're placing on what they call it.

E A T, which is experience now just being added. sorry, what was it? Experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. And about how they're trying to, if you like, particularly with the experience, look for articles where someone has actually used the thing that they're talking about and has personal experience and has expertise perhaps in it, if they're talking about it.

And this is justified in the articles. And I think when we look at what the ALI prompts can do for us, they can really only sum up the. What's out there and make it neutral. They can't give you that experience. So I think, yeah, I've come to the conclusion that they're not actually that much of a threat to search either.

[00:47:55] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, I think you're right. I also think there's an opportunity for Google to display that authoritativeness, for want of a better word, because maybe in the future, if the landscape does get flooded, those signals in search, So it would be really nice, for example, to know that if I'm, I don't know, let's say I'm browsing about CSS and I want to be, I want to find out about a new thing in CSS, if I go to a website and it's somewhere, somehow demonstrates to me in the search results page, okay, this website's been around for 10 years, they've done 5, 000 articles, they've been peer reviewed all over the place and it looks really good, that kind of, those kind of signals I think are going to start to matter.

Yeah. More and more, and maybe we're going to rely on those things more and more. yeah, it may be, it'll, maybe it'll go in the opposite direction than I perhaps thought it would. And the search engines will use that as a metric to bolster their results and give us more confidence in it.

[00:48:59] David Waumsley: Yeah. And for me, and I think it's that experience thing. if you ask, I don't know why anybody would bother to listen to us because we're not experts at anything, but I think it's th experience which the aI can't replace that people tune in with because it might. Be very similar to their own and their own thoughts. And all we're doing is exposing our continuous journey as we get things wrong over the time and explore our ignorance on many things, but it's relatable to most people, isn't it? you want to hear somebody's experience from their perspective, and, relate that to your own.

And I think that's what AI can't do. So yeah, it's, I don't think it's ever going to replace this kind of chat.

[00:49:40] Nathan Wrigley: Let's, hope not. Let's hope podcasts, and content like that keep going and we can rely on them. That was fun though. I've got to say

[00:49:48] David Waumsley: It was.

[00:49:48] Nathan Wrigley: of the most fun episodes that we've done. I can't remember the last time I giggled as much as that. So yeah, we will be back in a couple of weeks.

you've got some news for us then, but we'll be back in a couple of weeks. And so we'll see you then. Yeah,

tally

ho, ta bye bye for now, toodle pip, au revoir, see you later.

Okay, I hope that you enjoyed that? I have no words. I don't know what to say. Was it awful? Was it really interesting? I've no idea. It was certainly very fascinating from this side to create the episode. Thanks to David Waumsley for joining me on that journey.

The obvious thing to say here is that the AI tools just get better on at an exponential rate. And so it may very well be that the tools that you might use today, compared to the tools that we used when we recorded that just a few weeks ago, they may be significantly better, but it certainly does bring up some issues, whether or not the AI creates content that is really in line with what you want. Whether it misses things. Whether it just creates some new information, which is not really true. It's all very interesting. And we certainly hope that you enjoyed it.

The WP Builds podcast today was brought to you by Omnisend the top rated email and SMS marketing platform for WordPress. Omnisend merchants enjoy an average ROI of $72 for every dollar spent, which is double the industry average. Find out more at www dot Omnisend dot com, and give your brand the boost it deserves.

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And sincere thanks to GoDaddy Pro and Omnisend for their support of the WP Builds podcast.

Okay. That's all we've got for you this week. While I say we it's all that the AI has got for you this week. I hope that you enjoyed it. We will obviously be back. We've got this week in WordPress happening on Monday at 2:00 PM UK time.

We've also got the Sabrina Zeidan speed it up show on Thursday at 3:00 PM. This is all UK time. But we've also got a few live webinars happening this week. As I said at the top, go to WP Builds.com, scroll down, look for the coming up section, and find out what we've got going on there. You'll be able to see all of that content happening wpbuilds.com forward slash live at the appointed time.

But that's all we've got for you this week. I am going to fade in some dreadful AI generated cheesy music. Leave us a comment on the WP Builds.com website. Look for episode number 351.

Have a good week. Stay safe. Bye bye for now.