WordPress has gone all in with the AI. Not only does it have something that will write my posts for me (something I find interesting but repellent) it will also go through what I’ve written and judge me for it. This latter one is actually kind of useful and I might use more of it in future. The former I’ve used for material here and, again, it might be good to go to that well at another time.

What I will not use AI for is the writing of excerpts. There’s a little feature on my dashboard that will write the damn things for me, and to the last I’ve found them more useless than useful.

Here’s a sample, created from my Friday the 13^th review (Spoilers for a 40+ flick):

“Friday the 13th” (1980), written by Victor Miller and directed by Sean S. Cunningham, follows a group of young people who attempt to reopen a doomed campground and are killed one by one. The lone survivor, Alice, eventually confronts the killer, Mrs. Voorhees, whose motive is revenge for her drowned son, Jason. The film, while not a cinematic masterpiece, is appreciated for its suspense and classic horror elements. Despite initial mixed reviews, the film is recognized today for its significant impact on the horror genre.

That’s basically my whole frickin’ review right there. Why would readers click on through to read more?

It spoils the damn movie, too. I give spoiler warnings over there for a reason, damn it.

Best of all, I told the thing the desired length was 50 words. That puppy up there? 85 words. So it’s also chatty.

I mean no matter the length I set it will ALWAYS go over. Always.

Do you want to know what a good excerpt looks like? Try this:

A group of young people make the mistake of trying to reopen the wrong campground.

That’s it. That tells you what the film is without ruining the experience. I could give the score, that would be okay. But whatever I do, at least I’m not stomping all over my review.

Geez. The Hell, man. The hell.

Furthermore: The excerpt for this post?

The author expresses mixed opinions on WordPress’s AI features, praising its ability to review posts but criticizing its automatic excerpt generator. The latter, they argue, drafts lengthy summaries that essentially spoil full reviews, and ignore set content length limits. They highlight a manually crafted, concise synopsis as a more desirable excerpt.

51 words. It’s like it’s trying to cheese me off.

Now fair’s fair. Here’s the AI Assistant reviewing what I’ve wrote up to this point:

The post content discusses the author’s mixed opinions on WordPress’s AI features. They appreciate the AI’s ability to review posts but criticize its automatic excerpt generator. The author argues that the automatic excerpts are lengthy and spoil the full reviews instead of enticing readers. They provide a concise, manually crafted synopsis as a better alternative.

Now that’s helpful.