Gutenberg 22.7 is not an AI release in the marketing sense — there is no chat box bolted onto the editor. It is something more consequential: the plumbing that later AI features will run on.
What actually shipped
22.7 streamlines the editing workflow and aligns the block editor with AI adoption planned for WordPress 7.x. Notably, it introduces content guidelines aimed at standardising editorial voice across both AI and human contributors — an editorial governance feature as much as a technical one.
The foundations were laid in 6.9
WordPress 6.9 shipped the actual AI infrastructure: the Abilities API, MCP support, and a PHP AI Client SDK. That combination is what lets a model discover what a site can do and then do it, rather than screen-scraping wp-admin.
Why it matters for builders
If you build plugins, the Abilities API is the part to read first. Registering your plugin’s capabilities makes them addressable by any MCP-speaking client — which increasingly includes the editor itself. The plugins that describe themselves well will be the ones AI tooling can actually drive.
Sources: Search Engine Journal, WordPress Developer Blog — AI.
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