Managing a large website can be a lot of work. There's content to write, pages to update, images to describe, information to organise and, of course, the never-ending challenge of helping people find what they're looking for.

The good news? AI is starting to make a lot of that easier.

Our Drupal team has been getting hands-on with the latest AI modules and tools, testing how they can make life easier for content editors and create better experiences for website visitors.

And some of the results are pretty exciting.

Meet your new content assistant

Imagine opening Drupal to update a page and having an AI assistant right there in the editor.

Need to rewrite something in plain English? Done.

Want to make a paragraph friendlier or more concise? Easy.

Need help keeping content consistent with your organisation's tone of voice? AI can help with that too.

We've been testing AI tools within Drupal's CKEditor that can draft, review and improve content without editors having to jump between different applications.

We're particularly interested in how organisations can use their own editorial guidelines, tone of voice and content standards to guide these suggestions.

For government websites and other content-heavy platforms, where clear, accessible language really matters, that's a potentially big win.

The little jobs that add up

Not every AI feature needs to be revolutionary to be useful.

Take image alt text. Writing meaningful descriptions for hundreds of images is important for accessibility, but it can also be time-consuming.

We're testing AI tools that generate suggested alt text when images are uploaded into Drupal, ready for an editor to review.

The same goes for taxonomy tagging. AI can analyse content and suggest relevant categories, helping keep large websites organised.

Small improvements? Absolutely. But across thousands of pages, those little time-savers can make a real difference.

Search that actually understands the question

We've all experienced website search that doesn't quite get what we're asking.

AI-powered search is changing that.

Our developers have been experimenting with semantic search and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG). Rather than relying solely on matching keywords, these tools can understand the context of a question and provide answers based on website content.

Even a spelling mistake doesn't necessarily throw things off.

And importantly, the answers can link back to the original information, so visitors can explore the source for themselves.

For councils, government agencies and organisations with large libraries of information, this could make finding the right answer much simpler.

And there's more in the works

We're also exploring AI-assisted translation, bulk content improvements and smarter spam detection for Drupal webforms.

Not everything is ready for prime time just yet. Some features need more testing, and accuracy, accessibility, security and human oversight remain essential.

But that's the fun part. We're experimenting, challenging what's possible and working out which tools genuinely make websites better.

What's next?

Our goal is to turn the most useful AI capabilities into practical solutions that can be included in new Drupal builds or introduced to existing websites.

Because the best use of AI isn't necessarily the flashiest.

Sometimes it's simply making a website easier to manage, more accessible and a whole lot more helpful.

And that's the kind of AI we're excited about.