Automattic, the owner of WordPress.com, has released a new AI tool designed to help bloggers write more clearly and concisely.
The tool joins a series of writing assistants launched in recent years by the likes of privacy app maker Proton and giant Google.
Automattic's new tool, “Write Brief with AI,” complements the generative AI writing assistant that Automattic launched for WordPress last year. The new tool helps users craft their content using text-based prompts and adjust the tone of their posts to be more informal or relatable, for example.
The latest tools are currently available in beta as part of Jetpack, a suite of features that enhance the power of websites hosted on WordPress.com. Jetpack is available separately via a plugin for self-hosted WordPress sites. However, Write Brief with AI is only available (for free) to WordPress.com sites in its early beta phase. You can access it via the Jetpack icon in the top right of the editor.
“AI Outlining” by Automattic. Image courtesy of Automattic
WordPress' Write Brief with AI tells users if they're using too many words to describe something and allows them to click a “Suggest” button to automatically simplify the sentence.
Automattic's AI-powered synopsis writing. Image courtesy of Automattic
Similarly, it can tell you if your user's language lacks confidence – for example, if they use words like “probably” too frequently, or if they use overly complex words that may alienate some readers.
The tool also provides writers with a readability score based on three metrics: complexity, sentence length, and credibility.
Measuring blog post readability Image credit: Automattic
WordPress Web
While ChatGPT has emerged as the poster child for the generative AI movement, Automattic is in something of a privileged position as the driving force behind much of the web as we know it: the company is both a contributor to the open source, self-hosted WordPress project and a developer behind the commercial WordPress.com business, meaning that embedding AI knowledge into its near-ubiquitous blogging platform is poised for massive adoption.
Automattic says Write Brief with AI was born out of an internal Hack Week project, and after rolling it out internally, the company decided to make it available to everyone. “We quickly found the app to be useful and beloved, so we decided to bring it out into the world,” Noam Almosnino, senior product designer at Automattic, wrote in a blog post.
The broader AI writing assistant that Automattic launched last year is available in 12 languages, but Write Brief with AI is currently limited to English only.