I have been subscribed to the WordPress News blog for the longest time, and for the longest time none of what they post interested me. I don’t pay for my site and I just like to do my own thing most of the time, so none of the features they advertise really apply to me. Every now and again there will be something fun, like when they promoted Bloganuary a few years ago. I think I stay subscribed for those “just in case” moments.
Lately though, a lot of their posts make me scroll back up in my Reader and wonder what it is all about. If you aren’t subscribed, lately there have been a ton of AI updates to WordPress for both free and paying users, they are even advertising completely AI blogs and websites.
A few months ago I was going through my subscriptions and checking up on blogs that I used to enjoy, but have either slipped past the cracks in my Reader or haven’t posted in years. I found one former lifestyle blog that would do “what I did this week” posts. They were very straightforward and simple, most of them didn’t even have pictures, some days were just one mundane sentence like “Did laundry today”. I love raw, real, and the mundane, so obviously I subscribed immediately.
When I saw their name next in my bog catchup session, I felt excited. What had they been up to since I saw them last? Are they still even posting? I clicked on their site. What I saw was not weekly wrap up posts, but a wide variety of topics which I had never seen them cover before. I was interested about this shift and clicked on the most recent post to see this new theme on their blog.
Immediately something felt off. The writing style was, for lack of a better word, weird. Was it bad? No, everything was in the right place and every sentence made sense. But I just didn’t feel like this was original writing, I felt like I was experiencing uncanny valley. I returned to the home page and selected the post below where I just was, and ran into the same thing. Every carefully titled post was AI generated, and yes I ran a post through a checker just to make sure I wasn’t just being an asshole, it came back as being 100% AI generated. The authenticity was gone, the personality was gone, everything was just wiped. I hate unsubscribing from blogs, but I said goodbye to that one.
Today (May 20) on the WordPress.com News blog, they were showcasing a new website option, Lately. It sounds awesome for lifestyle bloggers. It is a more private weekly newsletter that is perfect for little updates and thoughts throughout the week. I won’t be creating a new site to use this feature, but I’ll admit it does sound cool. The catch? You feed your daily images and updates through an AI bot. The AI bot then drafts all of your entries into a post that you can edit or approve of, and then it gets sent out to your subscribers. I’m curious as to how it all works, but honestly I don’t want to create a new site and go through the trouble of testing it out. Hopefully there will be more photos of the process through WordPress soon, but we will have to wait and see. Just based on what you can read about it though, it seems to me like its just another case of AI writing blog posts for you.
From my perspective, blogging is an outlet for thoughts, creativity, memories, and community. That is the main reason I use it, though I know that there are thousands of niches for professional and commercial blogging.
I wonder, is this new website option really for my niche? I don’t think it is for lifestyle bloggers, it is just based off of lifestyle blogging for people who maybe don’t want to disrupt their own website but need that personal outlet, and don’t want to commit a lot of time polishing it up.
While reading that promotion post, all I could think about were the bloggers in my sphere who do the same thing that is being advertised without using AI, and have been making those posts way before this new site became a thing. Maggie has been publishing Weekly Snapshots, I have even done weeks in my life posts during Blogtober. You could expand the idea to a monthly wrap up like ones from Poorwa, Callie’s Corner, A Cuppa Cozy. You can even take it to the daily level like The Panvelite or Just Rojie, just to name a few.
Of course, this is just my corner of the internet, I surround myself with talented writers who inspire me with every post. I would consider myself privileged to have discovered them and write in a similar theme, and maybe the new users of Lately just don’t know how to find us. Instead of pushing for an AI generated lifestyle newsletter, why doesn’t WordPress highlight lifestyle blogs that already exist to advertise different niches? Of course we all know the answer, as it is a commonality between all corporations.
If you are considering starting a Lately site or adding it to your existing blog network, consider this: Instead of feeding daily blurbs, images, songs, or quotes into an AI chat box, feed them into a draft post in your basic WordPress dashboard. You don’t even need a title to start with, just open a draft, write the date each day, and add whatever you would have told AI. At the end of the week you can find a theme for your title, spruce the body up with complete sentences or reflection, explore fonts, colors, and widgets, and work your brain. Am I the new generation of old people who instead of a hatred for phones “ruining everything”, have a hatred for AI slop? Maybe!
Yes, AI can provide ideas and can have tools that are helpful, but it has no place in lifestyle blogging. It is your life, this is your story.
What are your thoughts on these new WordPress features? What do you think of WordPress pushing for completely AI websites from their users? Let me know, and I will see you all next time.
findingwithout 
I am not aware of WP doing any of this rubbish, Katelyn and its a damn shame. Not everyone is on board with AI, I am one of them. They need to leave my humble blog alone. I don’t use AI in my photography and never will because it becomes not my photography by doing so. I’m already sick and tired of AI. That’s my ten cents!
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AI isn’t even completely accurate, yet if you Google something, the first result is an AI generated response! I have to scroll before I even come across a reputable site. I was looking for art references the other day and instead of real images the search results showed AI generated content. I don’t get it, I think these search engines need to heavily filter AI search results and I want to research why AI is being so heavily pushed by these companies.
AI can never replicate what the human eye can capture through a lens. Your aptitude for color, shapes, values, and angles is unmatched!
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Agreed, Katelyn. This is a dangerous time for humanity in many ways. Be safe! 🙏🏻❤️
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I’ve been chit-chatting with the developers of such in the news comments section and I am 100x times telling them about how much I don’t want it all to clutter my wp reader situation. I want all to be separate. Also the .social and Lately is kinda similar. This lately thing is just they using an AI agent. Many use telegram to deploy such ecosystem…that churns through our different stuff and shares whatever we ask for lol..at this point they want us to atleast allow ai bot to be installed in our lives hehe.
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It feels very dystopian! and yea I would like it to be separated, or an option to not see any AI posts. I think there needs to be a rule that states something is AI, a lot of these blog posts I’ve seen have no indication that they used AI besides the tell-tale writing style, and they pass it off as their own work.
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I can’t believe there are really people who use AI to write poetry, generate paintings and go on with their day calling it “art”. I thought at least blogs were safe, but nahh. I seriously get an ick whenever I see anything AI generated on my screen, like what… being authentic is not cool anymore or what? I have so many incomplete write-ups in my notes app, I never post them because I feel like they’re not good enough, but now I realize, it really doesn’t have to be perfect. It just needs to be mine. And you know what? I’m just going to start doing monthly wrap-ups on my blog again!
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Yay!! And I agree, the push for AI on WP just makes me want to publish more “real” content to flood our niche with authenticity. My drafts are a graveyard haha so I understand about your notes app.
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And wow I didn’t know about this, there’s now an AI Podcast feature too!! I don’t bots to be narrating my story 😭
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I don’t need nor do I want anything to do with AI on my blog. I don’t want to give up my blog, but if WordPress uses AI more and wanting me to use it I will delete my blog and leave. Thank you for this post.
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Of course! I just keep seeing more and more AI being pushed by WP and it just feels very unsupportive of real writers that have been using their site for so long.
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ugh, i wanna read what people write, not what AI writes. i am though interested in the podcast update that they’re pushing. what do you think about it?
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I’m not really into podcasts so I don’t think I would listen to the AI version of someone’s writing if they choose to use it. I am curious if the tone is believable, I saw a comment on the WP post announcing the podcast feature and someone said it completely changed how their post was supposed to come across
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Oh man.. 😑
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That’s really unfortunate :C . I can’t stand AI; it’s incredibly infuriating. However, I still have hope that humanity will lean towards raw creativity.
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I am optimistic as well. I hope the novelty of AI will wear off soon, but more and more people look towards the easy, fast route. It feels like I can’t do anything online without AI being shoved in my face as a new feature to use whether it be Spotify or just plain old Google.
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100%. I think it’s great for creating schedules and helping with simple tasks like spell check and grammar, like Grammarly. Anything beyond that is just awful. I especially hate when I plug my text into QuillBot for spell check and punctuation, and it says my work is 100% A. I >.< That actually happened to my dear friend, who worked so hard on her essay, and our school's AI detector flagged her and reported that the essay was 100% A.I.; she ended up getting a B- after a few quarrels with her professor.
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I’ve not heard of these personally, but AI is ruining everything… it’s stealing from real writers and artists.
I’m not being funny at all but if you don’t have the time or talent to create your own creations then you have no right to be creating.
My blog suffered a couple of years ago because my life got very very busy and complicated, I would never have turned to AI to do it for me. I’m lucky now to have found a happy balance between work and writing and it feels damn good.
I hate AI, personally, and it’s disgusting to see people benefiting from it when us writers struggle to get by and be seen.
AI is for lazy people and it is practically stealing from hard working creators who put their heart and soul into their creations.
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