When AI Screws Up

Well, I’m fresh back from my cruise. And, I’m fat. 😜

I mean, you know how cruise buffets go. Let’s just say…. I’m really glad to be back and eat boring again. 😉 But, my wife and I had a relaxing weekend. And now, time to get back to it.

The newsletter is running late this week because I literally just stepped off the ship in Tampa this morning. But, let’s kick this this off…. and then I know I have quite a few client messages and requests to get back to. Appreciate your patience! 😇 🙏

In this issue, I wanna talk about when AI screws up.

I’ve got clients who have used AI to make improvements and tweaks to their own websites. And, it doesn’t always work out as planned.

So, let’s discuss the best approach to using AI for your site, as well as some best practices for how to safely use AI on your WordPress site.

Let’s do this thing….

When AI Screws Up

It has happened many times now among sites that I manage.

The client decides to use AI to do something. They bust out ChatGPT or Grok or something else… and they start “coding” with it.

They have AI code them a snippet to change something on the website.

Or in the case of copywriting, they’ll have AI give them suggestions on how to improve sales and conversions. And it’ll “write” copy for them.

But then I’m brought in. Sometimes to fix the mess.

Here’s the thing…

AI is a great tool – and it is only getting better. But, it can and DOES screw up. It can and DOES give bad advice.

It wasn’t too long ago I had one client code up a code snippet using Grok, drop it into the site… and it instantly broke their entire shopping cart. Nobody could buy anything. Yes, I fixed it. 😜

Last week, another client coded up a snippet to make another tweak to her site. And, this one worked! Technically, there was nothing wrong with it. Except…

Before too long, her site went offline with 500 server errors. Because the site was using up a ton of server memory and it exhausted resources. This happened because the snippet that AI had produced for her used the wrong WordPress hook to attach the filter to and it was executing FAR too aggressively. This isn’t something that was detected because the code technically functioned, however it had an unintended side effect.

That same day, another client used ChatGPT to advise on conversion improvement. It “wrote” copy that she then copy/pasted into her home page. The problem is…

You could tell it was AI from a mile away. I mean, let’s face it… ChatGPT has a pretty distinctive writing style. 🤣 But secondly, the text she put onto the page had no business being on the homepage. It turned the homepage into a mess of text. This week, I’m going to need to go in there and integrate the ideas into the site in a way which makes sense.

Here’s the lesson here…

AI is only as good as the context provided to it. With poor context, it will produce stupidity. All while attempting to look really smart doing it! 😜

AI is like having an entry-level employee with very little training. If you just sit that employee down to do things for you, but without a lot of systems and context to go by, what will they do? Well, they’ll do the best they can! And they wanna impress the boss! But, the output can suck.

Funny, too, but just like a low-level employee, AI will suck up to you while it tries. Tell you how smart you are. Tell you how you’re asking JUST the right questions! It tries to kiss your ass.

That’s what AI does. It is like putting a teenager… or a low-level entry-level employee… to work. It will TRY to do what you ask, but if you haven’t provided the decision process, the documentation, the processes, the context… it is going to produce output which isn’t very useful.

It is like having a gifted child. Smart. Can parrot off some smart-sounding stuff. But, that child is lacking WISDOM that only comes with real experience.

AI is a child that still needs the guiding hand of a parent.

If you want to get the best usage out of AI, you don’t do it by just asking it questions and hoping it is so smart to figure it all out. It isn’t.

To get the best use, you need to spend your time perfecting your systems. Documenting how your business works. How you make decisions. How you do things. You need to provide all of that to AI… in a format AI can understand.

THEN… when you use AI as a tool to speed things up, it can perform informed work for you. Stuff that works in context.

Then, you’ve got an employee that can actually do good work. Because that employee has gone through how YOU do things and how you want things… and can now execute on your orders much more intelligently.

Want AI Help Without Breaking Your Site?

AI can be a real time-saver… as well as help put you in the driver seat of your own site. It’s pretty great.

But, it needs the back of a guiding, experienced hand to be used effectively. That’s a huge reason Concierge exists.

Not only do I provide all of the safety rails for when something goes wrong, but I draw from years of experience not only with WordPress tech, but with the systems and processes (and marketing) that goes along with running an online business.

Concierge is your “web team in a box” for WordPress. You bring the ideas and the goals. I’ll help you implement them safely, keep the site stable, and clean up the mess when needed… without your website becoming a science experiment.

I also have the contextual knowledge of the “big picture” to help you implement “advice” from AI without screwing up the way your site looks and functions.

With Concierge, you bring the goal… and I’ll help you implement it safely, keep things stable, and clean up the mess when needed.

WordPress News & Updates

• FluentCart – New Release. FluentCart 1.3.11 was announced. This version now comes with a separate available extension specifically for Elementor users to create store pages using Elementor. They’ve also made the inventory management functionality available in the free version. There’s some more goodies to it, which you can see here in the full announcement post.
• Oxygen 6 Is LIVE. I’ve never been a big user of the Oxygen page builder, but I’ve heard it is pretty nice. And, I’m guessing it is now even nicer since they’ve just officially launched version 6. Like a lot of builders, they’re now going with a class-first approach for reusable, consistent styling across your site. Here are the full release notes.
• Hetzner Increases Prices. The popular infrastructure provider – Hetzner – is officially increasing their pricing effective April 1st. It isn’t an insignificant change, either, as it looks like a roughly 30% price hike. Hetzner hasn’t increase their prices in years, but they’re quite transparent about the reasons why they must. For example, exploding computing demand for AI has driven prices up substantially. This is pertinent to me because I use Hetzner on the backend for Concierge Cloud hosting, so my costs are going up. But, no worries, for now, I will not need to increase Concierge prices.
• TutorLMS 4.0 Coming Soon. A first look at TutorLMS 4.0 has been published, showing a new interface, a “reimagined” quiz experience, a more app-like experience, cleaner dashboards, and more.
• The FAIR Project Dies (At Least For WordPress). The FAIR project was an effort to build a decentralized WordPress repository free from the centralized control of Automattic and Matt Mullenweg. Unfortunately, it looks like the market didn’t really care. The co-founders Joost de Valk and Karim Marucchi have both stepped away from the project and said they failed to secure meaningful financial support from any major hosting companies. Read more over at The Repository.
• SudoWP Brings Abandoned Plugins Back To Life. ​SudoWP is a community-first effort that adopts orphaned WordPress plugins and brings them back into safe hands. It hunts down and fixes critical security flaws so the code stays stable, secure, and usable for everyone. Certainly an interesting idea.
• Pie Calendar + Pie Connector. Pie Calendar has been my go-to solution for clients needing an event calendar on their site. Unlike the bloat of something like Events Calendar, Pie is much more streamlined. They now have version 1.0 of their Pie Calendar connector, providing a connection to Eventbrite for people using that to sell tickets. It also has the aility to import ICS feeds, so it can bring in events from popular calendar systems such as Google Calendar, Basecamp, etc. Learn more about the Pie Connector here.

The AI Safety Checklist for WordPress

AI can be a legit accelerator for your WordPress site… but only if you stop treating it like magic. Most AI screw-ups aren’t dramatic hacks. They’re normal-looking changes shipped too fast, in the wrong place, with no safety net.

So before you paste that snippet into your site, run this checklist.

1) Put the change in the right place

If AI gives you code, don’t drop it into the first place you find. Avoid pasting into functions.php unless you’re comfortable undoing it fast. A snippets plugin (or better, a small custom plugin) gives you a clean on-off switch and keeps changes organized.

I prefer FluentSnippets, personally.

2) Create a rollback before you touch anything

Don’t make changes without a way back. Make sure there’s a recent backup you can actually restore, and know what you’ll do if the site starts throwing errors. This is one of those boring safety layers that only feels “important” the day it saves you… and it’s a big part of what Concierge is already built around.

3) Use staging when the stakes are real

If the site makes money or captures leads, don’t experiment in production. Anything touching checkout, memberships, logins, forms, CRM tagging, site-wide filters, or performance should be tested on staging first. AI code can “work” while quietly chewing resources in the background.

4) Ask AI about risk, not just the solution

After AI gives you a snippet, immediately follow up with questions that force it to think like a careful developer: How often will this run? Why this hook? Could it cause performance issues on a busy site? What edge cases could break it? What’s the cleanest way to disable it?

If the answers are fuzzy, that’s a sign you shouldn’t ship it yet.

5) Define what “working” means

“Nothing crashed” is not a test. If the change impacts a key flow, actually run through that flow. For code, that means testing the exact feature plus anything connected to it (checkout, forms, logged-in behavior, mobile). For copy, it means confirming it fits the purpose of the page, improves clarity, and doesn’t turn the homepage into a wall of text.

6) Watch the site after you deploy

A lot of AI mistakes are delayed. Keep an eye out for 500 errors, sudden slowness, weird behavior after caching kicks in, or resource spikes at the host. Concierge clients benefit here because this kind of ongoing oversight is part of the point… it’s not just fixing problems, it’s noticing them before they become expensive.

7) Treat snippets like real assets

If you add code, it should be trackable. Give it a label and a reason for existing, document what it’s supposed to do, note where it came from, and if it’s temporary, set a reminder to remove it. Random code pasted into random places is how WordPress sites become haunted houses.

Again, I use FluentSnippets. You can give each snippet a clear title as well as a description so you know exactly what it is for.