Something curious is happening with WordPress, the internet giant known for letting almost anyone build a website from scratch, and it has everything to do with artificial intelligence.
At the company’s big annual event in Portland, CEO Matt Mullenweg pulled back the curtain on Telex, a new experimental project that puts AI right at the fingertips of creators.
Mullenweg described Telex as an “early version” and compared it to certain trendy services that help people build software by just typing a prompt. His onstage demo gave the crowd a look at how Telex can generate custom website pieces, like animations or content blocks, with little fuss.
Housed separately on telex.automattic.ai, Telex lives in its own corner of the web for now. The process is plain: users write what they want, the platform spits out a zip file, and this file can be plugged right into any WordPress site or the new browser-based Playground environment.
Pushing the Boundaries of Website Creation
While the technology is still in its early days—barely out of infancy, some testers say—it already hints at a future where building a dynamic website may no longer require lines of code or hours of troubleshooting.
Feedback so far has reflected both the promise and the pitfalls. Some plugin attempts hit snags, and Mullenweg did not shy away from that fact, acknowledging Telex is an ambitious work in progress.
He spoke candidly to the WordCamp crowd about making publishing radically more accessible. “When we think about democratized publishing, embedded in that is WordPress’ mission,” he said. “It’s about making things open, in every language, at low cost, where we actually own it and have rights to it.”
Mullenweg did not just talk about Telex. He demonstrated another quick AI experiment—a help assistant created during the company’s Contributor Day. With only a couple hours to spare, WordPress engineers gave browsers a clever way to get instant help while building their sites.
He also praised a different AI browser called Comet, built by Perplexity, which allows people to interact with WordPress directly from that interface.
Of course, big changes invite a bit of anxiety. Mullenweg acknowledged lingering concerns, the pace of AI is dizzying and, in some circles, frightening. Yet he kept the mood optimistic, saying, “At the core of it, there is a seed of something, which is so enabling. It is an incredibly exciting time to be building for WordPress.”
Questions swirled around WordPress’ ongoing dispute with web host WP Engine. The tension centers on how some companies profit from WordPress’ work without contributing enough in return, and there’s confusion among users over what’s officially connected to WordPress and what’s not.
On that simmering legal matter, Mullenweg kept it brief, noting, “It’s working its way through the legal system. We trust in the fairness of the courts.” He even mentioned attending a settlement conference where the other company’s CEO was a no-show, but offered no further details.
For a firsthand perspective on the annual event in Portland keynote address and to discover more about WordPress forming a new AI team for developer innovation, keep exploring the latest updates.
