Earlier in the week we demoed how Elements AI can build tables with CSV data, thankfully we’re back with another AI based video that’s a little more fun!
The Elements AI assistant can now generate images for your website, because of the way we’re building this out, the AI has context of your website down to the position the image will be placed. This means it can batch generate images that perfectly fit the page and content.
This feature has blown us away with how well it works, watch the video below to see it in action.
This is an in-development version of Elements and is not yet available publicly.
Elements AI will ship in a future of build of Elements 3.
We’d love to hear what you think of this week’s new AI feature. All feedback is greatly appreciated and helps shape the future of Elements
I would like to see less AI and more components. I have been with Elements almost since day one, have watched the thousands of videos, and still struggle making a single blog page for my sites. I am not interested in paying any fees for AI, I just want what I have to work at less as well as classic did.
I am okay with the AI, I think it is really cool and clearly going to be helpful, and probably expensive.
I think what we are saying is we would simply like the existing work, which is really, really good, completed. Finish the human designer side. I know the urge is going to be to ask what is missing. My answer is — the forum is full of ideas and requests.
Perhaps you missed it… but we’ve just released Elements 3 with an absolute tonne of new features, 3 new components, loads of polish, none of them are AI related. Here’s all the new things we’ve shipped in the past ten days (with more on the way next week):
Upgraded to Tailwind 4.3.2
Faster Preview and Export
The Editor now preserves alpha transparency for WebP and AVIF images!
Updated all themes to use Tailwind 4
Updated border Radius and Shadow tokens to match Tailwind 4
Update opacity utilities to use Tailwind 4 opacity modifiers
Added Mauve, Olive, Mist, and Taupe colours from Tailwind 4 to all themes
Global controls now use Tailwind 4 syntax and generate cleaner spacing classes
New Mask Component
New 3D Transforms Component
New Shapes Component to allow text to flow around shapes!
Added caption and author support to Gallery Lightbox
Added CSV (local or remote) support to Table Component
Added Google Sheets support to Table Component
Added Drop Zone support to Table Component
Added box-shadow colour and opacity controls
Added support for radial and conical Gradients
Added support for adding custom HTML attributes to the Container component
Added volume control to the Audio Component
Fixed dark mode link colours not being applied in the Text Component
Navbar folders now show active styling when a child page is active
Components that require PHP will now prompt to switch page extension from html to php
Improved CMS Online Editor UI on Mobile devices.
Online CMS Metadata sidebar is now resizable with an increased maximum width
You can now configure the maximum upload size for the Online Editor and MCP server
Fixed the Online Editor rich text editor incorrectly encoding YouTube embed code
Fixed issue when creating new posts in the online CMS
Upgraded the editor styling engine to reduce CSS conflicts and improve isolation
Markdown Preview option added to the editor
Fix white edge lines appearing on dark JPEGs in the edit-mode preview
Added alt text support for CMS Custom Image resources
Labels in the Inspector no longer overflow, and the label column is wider
API: Asset-only changes in shared assets are now detected and will trigger a publish
API: Added a new requiresPhp key
API: Resource controls now support accept/exclude MIME type filters
Numerous other bug fixes and improvements
What are you getting stuck on? If you let us know we can help you out. Perhaps post your project via Elements Cloud so we can take a look for you.
Interesting, this is something that the new built-in AI assistant will also be able to do!
As I said above, we’ve just shipped Elements 3, along with a bunch of point releases with more on the way next week. None of it is AI related. I’m not sure we can work much faster
We have to build AI into Elements now, not sometime in the future. Built-in AI is going to become table stakes for website builders. If we don’t work on this, we’re going to find it increasingly difficult to sell Elements to new (and existing) customers… and ultimately that means we’ll go out of business.
We’ve just shipped a tonne of new features and have plenty more we’d like to add. But if there’s a specific feature you’d like to see, you need to let us know.
Providing Perplexity supports connecting to an MCP (and I think it does), you’ll be able to connect to the Elements MCP server.
However you won’t get access to everything that’s built into Elements AI, it’ll be slightly more limited (and slower), but that’s just the nature of the way the MCP connection works.
For example, you won’t be able to use the re-generate image feature demoed in this video.
I have watched the videos, and they seem to start off fairly easy, but it does not take long to notice that the video creator is probably the component creator. Allot of previous knowledge is assumed, and the instruction pace seems to speed up. I keep waiting for a third party video or book. It there a FREE new built in AL-assistant I am unaware of?
I personally do not want to visit let alone create any website that uses on the fly created AI images. As a long time graphic designer and retoucher, this goes against everything I have believed in and worked for since the mid 90s. The tech is impressive but imo it’s soulless and just plain wrong
However, I am VERY excited about using AI to help me knock out the tedious aspects website building. But what I really want is AI that can take my old RW website and convert it to Elements. I first purchased Elements pre v1.0 and I still haven’t even used it because of 1) the learning curve and 2) the monumental task of converting theduckinnchicago.com to Elements.
My nephew is a graphic designer, so I understand the disdain many people have toward AI-generated images. But there is another side to this issue.
Painting was something I enjoyed many years ago until arthritis started creeping in. While I was never prolific, and I still had photography, it was sad to let go of this creative outlet. Now, with AI image generation, I can once again enjoy seeing an idea come to life on (digital) paper.
@dan This is really cool, and it gave me an idea that would solve one of the concerns I had about using Elements built in Ai.
The ability to upload a client brief into the project that Elements Ai could read. This would give the Ai personal context of each client. We already have the ability to create markdown files, we could create a markdown file for the client brief.
We’ve also just added support for adding files into the chat window for the AI to use, this has opened up a lot of possibilities… more on that next week
