Which AI Assistant Should You Choose?

You wouldn’t install three SEO plugins on the same site. Would you? They’d fight each other, slow things down, and make a mess. You’d pick one, stick with it, and move on.

So would you install three AI assistants?

WordPress 7.0 “Armstrong,” released May 20, 2026, quietly rewrote the rules on this. AI is no longer just a plugin. It’s part of the core. WordPress is now all about what “choosing an AI” actually means for your site. Exciting days!

In this article we are looking at what changed in WordPress 7.0, walking through the four main AI providers, flagging a security risk most people are ignoring, and giving you a simple way to make the right call for your site.

TL;DR – No Time to Read? Here Are the Key Points.

WordPress 7.0 built AI infrastructure directly into core. Your AI provider now connects at a foundation level – not as a plugin on top.

The four main options are OpenAI (ChatGPT), Claude (Anthropic), Gemini (Google), and local/self-hosted models.

Pick ChatGPT for the widest plugin support.

Pick Claude if content quality is your top priority.

Pick Gemini if you live in Google’s ecosystem.

Pick local models if data privacy is non-negotiable.

Your AI API key is now a high-value target for hackers. Treat it like a password to your bank account — not a plugin setting.

Do not install multiple AI assistants. It creates duplicate costs, conflicting content, and a bigger security risk.

What Actually Changed in WordPress 7.0

Before version 7.0, every AI plugin did its own thing.

One plugin connected to OpenAI. Another to Claude. A third generated images somewhere else. Each one had its own settings page, its own API key, its own billing, and its own way of doing things. If you ran three AI plugins, you’d manage three completely separate systems.

WordPress 7.0 replaced all that with one shared foundation.

It’s called the WP AI Client: a PHP API built directly into WordPress core. It gives every plugin on your site one standard way to talk to AI providers. You connect your provider once, under Settings > Connectors, and every compatible plugin uses that same connection.

Three providers are built in right out of the box: OpenAI, Anthropic (Claude), and Google Gemini.

On top of that, an optional AI plugin enables things like title generation, excerpt writing, image creation, alt text suggestions, and image editing — all inside the WordPress editor.

One important thing to know: a fresh WordPress 7.0 install doesn’t do anything with AI until you set it up. Nothing leaves your site until you configure a connection and switch it on. The new AI infrastructure is just the pipes. You control the water.

But once you turn it on, the question changes from “which AI plugin should I install?” to something bigger: Which AI provider do you want running at the heart of your WordPress site?

The Four AI Providers – What Each One Means for Your Site

“If you want to differentiate yourself from AI, focus on what makes you human: expertise, emotional intelligence, creativity, ethics, and strategic thinking.”
Rocket.net – How Do You Differentiate Your Services From AI?

Provider | Best For | Strength | Weakness
ChatGPT / OpenAI | Broadest plugin support | Wide ecosystem | Lower prose quality
Claude / Anthropic | Best writing quality | Long-form prose | Smaller plugin base
Gemini / Google | SEO & image tasks | Google ecosystem | Formulaic output
Local / Ollama | Full data privacy | No data leaving site | Technical setup required

ChatGPT (OpenAI) — Best for Broad Compatibility

Choose this if you run a lot of third-party plugins, manage multiple client sites, or need the widest possible support from the WordPress ecosystem.

ChatGPT is the AI that most WordPress tools were built around first. The majority of AI-powered plugins, marketing tools, and automation platforms were built against OpenAI’s API. That means fewer compatibility headaches, more documentation, and easier onboarding if your team is already using it.

For agencies managing a stack of client sites with different plugin needs, OpenAI is currently the low-friction choice.

The big downside is writing quality. ChatGPT produces solid, structured content — but independent tests consistently rank it below Claude for long-form prose. A 2026 blind writing comparison found ChatGPT-generated text flagged by AI detection tools as high as 96%, which matters for publishers who want their content to sound as human as possible.

Bottom line for WordPress: If your site depends on a wide range of AI-aware plugins, OpenAI is the safest bet for compatibility right now.

Claude (Anthropic) — Best for Content Quality

Choose this if you publish a lot, editing time is a real cost, and you care deeply about how your content sounds.

Claude has become the quiet favourite among professional writers — and the data backs it up.

In a detailed 2026 head-to-head writing test by HumanizeThisAI, Claude won 4 out of 8 blind-judged rounds against ChatGPT and Gemini – and was rated the hardest of the three to detect as AI-written.

Multiple independent comparisons in 2026 ranked Claude first for long-form prose, tone consistency, and what researchers call “long-form coherence” — the ability to hold a strong voice across thousands of words without drifting.

“For essays, narratives, thought leadership pieces, ghostwritten articles, and any writing that needs to sustain quality over thousands of words, Claude is the clear choice.”
tactiq.io

In a WordPress workflow, that means fewer editing passes per article. Faster publishing equals lower cost per piece of content.

Claude also has a specific edge: long context. If you’re feeding it a full brand style guide, a lengthy editorial brief, or a complex multi-page document, Claude holds that context better than the alternatives. For content-heavy sites, that’s a real practical advantage.

The real weakness is ecosystem size. Claude’s plugin support in WordPress is smaller than OpenAI’s. And for image generation tasks, it lags behind Gemini.

Bottom line for WordPress: If the quality of your writing matters most and you want to spend less time editing AI output, Claude is the one most professional content teams reach for.

Gemini (Google) — Best for SEO and Research Workflows

Choose this if you rely heavily on Google tools, your work is research-heavy, or alt text and image understanding matter to your workflow.

Gemini brings two things the other providers don’t match as cleanly.

First, it’s strong on images. Gemini is particularly good at alt text generation and understanding visual content — which makes sense given Google’s years of investment in image recognition.

Second, it plugs into Google’s ecosystem. If your workflow runs through Google Docs, Drive, or Search data, Gemini fits more naturally than the alternatives.

For SEOs, there’s also a strategic angle worth considering: Gemini is built by the same company that decides how your content gets found across Google products.

As AI-powered search continues changing how content surfaces, understanding how Google’s own model processes information isn’t a trivial advantage.

The downside is consistency. Multiple 2026 writing comparisons rank Gemini third for pure prose quality. It tends toward list-heavy, formulaic output – good structure, but less natural voice. For brands where tone matters, that’s a real limitation.

Bottom line for WordPress: If your work is research-first, image-heavy, or deeply tied to Google’s tools, Gemini earns a serious look. For writing quality alone, it trails the other two.

Local AI Models (Ollama and Self-Hosted) — Best for Privacy and Compliance

Choose this if your content is sensitive, you have GDPR obligations, or your organisation’s policies don’t allow data leaving your infrastructure.

One of the best parts of WordPress 7.0 is that its connector architecture works with locally-hosted AI models, not just cloud providers. Fueled released an Ollama connector plugin in April 2026 that lets WordPress talk to open-source models — Llama, Mistral, Gemma, and others — running entirely on your own hardware. A separate community plugin supports over 110 compatible endpoints including LM Studio, LocalAI, and OpenRouter.

You set it up under Settings > Connectors, exactly the same as a commercial provider. No API key needed for local instances.

Caveat: this takes real technical setup. Model quality varies depending on what you run and what hardware you’re running it on. It’s not a one-click solution. But for healthcare, legal, government, or enterprise teams where data residency is a hard requirement, it’s the only option that fully satisfies it.

Bottom line for WordPress: If compliance or privacy rules out cloud AI, local models are now a legitimate production option. If you don’t have those requirements, the other three providers are simpler to manage.

The Security Risk You Might be Interested in

Within days of WordPress 7.0 launching, Oliver Sild, CEO of Patchstack (one of the leading WordPress security companies), posted a public warning on X:

“WordPress 7.0 combined with plugin vulnerabilities = free AI tokens. There will be an absolute rush by hackers to steal API keys.”
@OliverSild on X, May 22, 2026

This a real shift in the economics of hacking WordPress.

Before 7.0, a compromised WordPress admin account was bad – but the damage was mostly about content, redirects, or server resources. Now, that same compromised account can also drain a four or five-figure monthly AI API bill before you’ve even noticed anything is wrong.

AI API keys are a different kind of credential. They represent direct, billable access to large language models. A stolen key can be used to run networks of AI bots, run phishing campaigns at scale, or generate malware — all at your expense and we’re talking money and reputation.

Patchstack’s own 2026 security report puts this in context: there were 11,334 new vulnerabilities found in the WordPress ecosystem in 2025 — a 42% jump year-on-year. The median time from a vulnerability being disclosed to mass exploitation? Five hours.

A November 2025 vulnerability (CVE-2025-11749) in the AI Engine plugin, used by over 100,000 sites, already showed how quickly the attack mechanics can be assembled. Sites that had enabled the plugin’s “No-Auth URL” feature inadvertently exposed bearer tokens through the WordPress REST API, allowing unauthenticated attackers to escalate to full administrative access.

A separate WordPress 7.0 security bug was reported shortly after launch showing that API keys entered in the Connectors setup form could appear in plain text inside browser autofill dropdowns.

What to Actually Do About It

Treat your AI API key the same way you’d treat your payment credentials. Not like a plugin setting.

API Security Checklist
– One key per provider per connector.
– Don’t reuse API keys across sites or uses.
– Set usage limits at the provider level. Most AI providers let you cap monthly spend — use that cap.
– Rotate your keys on a schedule. Quarterly is a reasonable starting point.
– Audit which plugins have access to the Connectors screen. Not every plugin needs it.
– Monitor usage actively. The WP AI Client has no built-in throttle — multiple plugins sharing one key can blow through your monthly budget in under a minute if something goes wrong.

Remember: a managed hosting environment with active security monitoring gives you a real layer of protection here. Anomalous API usage – a sudden spike in AI calls at 3am — is the kind of thing a good hosting provider can catch before it turns into a bill. That connection between your hosting choice and your AI security posture is real and worth thinking about.

The Mistake Most Sites Are About to Make

The temptation of having “more.”

You install a ChatGPT plugin. Then a Claude plugin because you heard the writing is better. Then an AI SEO tool. Then an AI image plugin. Then an AI agent plugin for the workflow automation you saw in a YouTube video.

Before long you’ve got six AI systems running on the same site, storing six sets of credentials, generating six sets of costs, and producing content in six different voices.

That’s not AI-powered. That’s AI chaos.

WordPress 7.0’s whole architecture was built to prevent this. The Connectors system exists so that one provider, one credential, and one shared infrastructure layer handles everything. Every compatible plugin on your site draws from the same connection.

The smart setup is almost always one primary AI provider, one clear workflow, and one policy.

What You Should Decide Right Now

If you manage WordPress sites for clients, some new questions are coming your way.

Which AI provider will you use for client work?

Different answers make sense for different client types. Claude for content-heavy publishers. OpenAI for clients with complex plugin stacks. Gemini for research-intensive or Google-first organizations. Make the decision deliberately, and document the reason.

What are your editorial rules?

AI should help create content. A human should still review it. No provider makes that step optional — they just change how much work that step takes.

Who pays for tokens?

When AI is baked into a client’s site, API costs need to be accounted for. Who’s covering them? What’s the cap? Who gets the alert when something unexpected spikes the usage?

How are you handling the credentials?

AI API keys should live in a restricted, monitored location — not pasted into a shared spreadsheet. Treat them like payment credentials. Restrict access. Rotate them. Know which plugins can see them.

The Bigger Picture: This Is Infrastructure, Not a Feature

WordPress 7.0 delivered more than title generation and Alt text. The real story is that WordPress now has a standardised AI layer sitting inside the platform.

“WordPress Core ships zero AI providers. Instead, providers are installed as connector plugins. Site owners add their API keys once, and every AI-powered plugin on the site can use them.”
onpoint.to

Right now that layer generates content. But the same infrastructure is the foundation for AI that manages WooCommerce product catalogues, handles support ticket workflows, coordinates editorial schedules, and operates across your entire site through standardised commands.

WordPress is moving toward being an AI-native platform. The provider you configure today is the one sitting at the foundation of that.

So choose it like infrastructure. Because that’s what it is.

The Quick Decision Guide

One question cuts through everything: what does quality mean for your site?

Broadest plugin support and easiest setup → OpenAI / ChatGPT

Best writing quality, less editing time → Claude / Anthropic

Google ecosystem, research, and image tasks → Gemini / Google

Full privacy, no third-party data → Local models via Ollama

Pick one. Configure it properly. Protect the key like it’s worth money — because it is.

Your AI provider isn’t just another plugin anymore.

It’s part of the foundation of your site. Treat it that way.