General discussion about the massive surge of free AI generated plugins in 2026

These are only free plugins, that were submitted to wp.org - not counting all of the others that have not been submitted. The counts are 2-2.5x higher than 6months ago - source: https://x.com/andrewhoyer/status/2079271814170390581/photo/1

These are only free plugins, that were submitted to wp.org - not counting all of the others that have not been submitted.

My main concerns about that ( in no particular order ):

• Pressure on the reviewers ( the same amount of reviewers that gatekeep the access to the repo )
• Premium features served as free plugins
• Decreased profitability of premium plugins
• Doubtful support ( assuming most of them were AI generated by non-tech users )
• Increased security risk (same as above )
• Huge duplication/competition in every niche ( eg. at least 11 plugins just for EU Withdrawal button )

On one side - I understand why that happens. The cost of creating own plugin has dropped probably around 10x now.

But I'm really afraid that this will seriously hurt WordPress as a whole on the long run.