AI Experiments 0.5.0 is out, and its release notes say more about where WordPress core is heading than about the plugin itself. The WP AI Client started life as a standalone Composer package, and it is now going straight into core.
I have spent years keeping dependency bloat under control on enterprise WooCommerce sites, so watching a canonical plugin drop its own libraries in favor of native core functions is welcome. It costs something, though. This version sets WordPress 7.0 as the minimum, so anyone still on 6.9 is locked out of the newest experiments until April 9th.
The WP AI Client goes into core
Earlier versions of AI Experiments had to ship their own AI client infrastructure, which meant version conflicts as soon as another plugin loaded a different build of the same library. Putting the WP AI Client into WordPress 7.0 core removes that whole class of problem.
Sitting on core infrastructure also means every experiment you run hits the same API that core features will use later. Plenty of experimental features have died because they drifted too far from the core roadmap to merge back, so that alignment is worth more than it looks. It fits the WP AI Client ecosystem changes we have been tracking.
Credential migration and the Connectors screen
The change you will notice first is where your API keys live. They used to sit in the plugin’s own settings. They now move to the central Connectors screen, at Tools -> Connectors in WordPress 7.0.
That saves the usual hunt for whichever option row a given OpenAI or Anthropic key ended up in, because WordPress keeps the provider registry itself through the Connectors API. If you are building custom AI features, move off hardcoded keys and custom option fields and onto the core connectors.
<?php
/**
* Simple check to see if the new Core AI infrastructure is available
* before running an experiment.
*/
function bbioon_check_ai_capability() {
if ( function_exists( 'wp_ai_client_prompt' ) ) {
// We are on WP 7.0+ with core AI support
return true;
}
return false;
}
?>What is coming in 0.6.0
The next version is a bigger swing: image editing experiments covering erase, replace and background removal, plus contextual tagging that suggests taxonomies from your content. That pulls the editor further toward the interactive editor experience core has been building. The plugin is also likely to be renamed from “AI Experiments” to “WordPress AI”.
If AI Experiments 0.5.0 is eating your dev hours, I can take it off your plate. I have been working on WordPress since the 4.x days.
What I would do
Keep AI Experiments 0.5.0 off production unless the site already runs a WordPress 7.0 beta or RC, because the minimum version bump is a real breaking change. On a dev box, start testing the connectors now. AI moving out of plugin territory and into core is the largest architectural change WordPress has made in years, and it is easier to absorb on a dev box than on a client’s site.
