WordPress 7.0 Features - Title

WordPress 7.0 ships May 20, 2026, and the biggest story isn't a new block or a faster editor. It's AI. For the first time, WordPress has a built-in way to connect your site to AI providers, and it's baked right into the core.

A single place for AI keys

Until now, every AI plugin handled its own connection. You'd paste your OpenAI key into one plugin, your Anthropic key into another, and hope nothing broke. WordPress 7.0 fixes that with a new Connectors screen under Settings > Connectors. You add your API keys once, and any compatible plugin can use them.

Out of the box it supports OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic.

The Abilities API for developers

Plugin and theme developers get the Abilities API, which lets them tell AI tools what their plugin can actually do. So if you ask an AI assistant to "add a product to my store," it knows which plugin handles that and how to call it. It's the plumbing that makes AI features work the same way across the whole platform.

There's also the WP AI Client, a shared interface plugins can use to send prompts and get results without each one building its own setup.

Do you have to use it?

No. If you don't add an API key and don't install AI plugins, your site behaves exactly like before. The AI parts are additive.

Before you update

Back up your site, test on staging first, and make sure you're on PHP 7.4 or higher (8.3+ is better). Then enjoy the new tools.