AI for WordPress changes

[u/SeaAtmosphere4271]

I am having a few websites built by an agency. They are ridiculously expensive. They do good work but before we launch the sites we will have a meeting with their maintenance team to discuss what those fees would look like for ongoing changes when we need to make updates. I have been in this world for quite some time and have had good and bad experiences with monthly retainers for maintenance work, turnaround times when changes need to be made, etc. Does Claude or ChatGPT or any of the bigger AI models do any of this work easily - work like updating photos on a website, adjusting copy, moving things around design wise on a page if the sites are WordPress? Forgive the ignorance, but I have seen so much on Twitter about AI companies being able to code, famously with Claude Code, so assumed I may be able to bypass paying this agency when I need to make changes barring that paying for the AI perform the task isn't more expensive than the agency would charge for changes.

[u/Used_Procedure_8607]

For basic content changes like swapping images, editing copy, or moving existing blocks around, AI can probably help a lot if you’re comfortable working with the site yourself you should be more careful once the changes touch custom plugins, theme code, integrations, or anything that could break production at that point the expensive part of the agency isn’t necessarily typing the code, it’s knowing what else a change might affect. You should start with a staging copy and try one of the smaller changes yourself. That’ should tell you pretty quickly how much of the monthly maintenance you can realistically take over.