AI Shortcodes in WordPress Bringing audio video and chat directly into your site

AI services are becoming increasingly accessible within everyday tools. Adding audio and video typically requires additional steps or the use of external platforms. With a few shortcodes, WordPress can generate and cache media directly, converting written text into audio or video without having to repeat the work each time.

I have three custom WordPress shortcodes that bring AI directly into my website. All were generated with the help of ChatGPT, and each one took less than an hour to develop.

• Audio shortcode: It sends the text in the shortcode to ElevenLabs via an API, which generates an MP3 file. The file is stored in the WordPress media library and cached, so the audio is only generated once.
• Video shortcode: This works differently from ElevenLabs. With Synthesia, I must manually create a video of an avatar speaking the text I provide, and then include it on my site using a dedicated shortcode. The video is cached after the first time it is used.
• Chat shortcode: This embeds a ChatGPT-style panel on my site via the OpenAI API, allowing visitors to interact with the site’s content through a conversational interface.

Beneath each example below, I display the actual WordPress shortcode so you can see exactly how it works.

If you are not familiar with WordPress, a shortcode is simply a small piece of text enclosed in square brackets, such as [gallery], that instructs WordPress to perform a specific action. Instead of writing code, you insert the shortcode, and WordPress automatically replaces it with the right content or feature.

These shortcodes demonstrate how straightforward it is to integrate AI services with WordPress, enabling the creation of real-time audio and video content.

[InsertAudio title="Think Together" showtranscript="no" break="yes" showpanel="yes" voiceid="v03" status="on"]We often think of reasoning as something we do alone, but our future depends on the quality of our collective thinking. "Thinking Together" means creating space for conversations where ideas can evolve, differences are explored, and new possibilities emerge.[/InsertAudio]

[InsertMP4 src="https://conversational-leadership.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Conversational-Leadership-v02.mp4" title="What is Conversational Leadership?" description='A short video generated by Synthesia introducing Conversational Leadership. Synthesia is a web-based platform that uses AI to create realistic, lip-synced videos from text, allowing users to generate professional-looking content without cameras, actors, or microphones.' posterx="https://conversational-leadership.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Use-of-Self.jpg" break="yes" showtranscript="yes" showdescription="yes" status="on"]
Conversational Leadership is about how we respond to the complexity of the world we're living in. It's about taking responsibility for the changes we wish to see, and recognising that none of us can do that alone. By practising leadership through dialogue, we bring in different perspectives, we listen, we question, and we learn and think together. In this way, dialogue becomes the means by which we create the possibility of a better world.
[/InsertMP4]

[InsertMP4 src="https://conversational-leadership.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Rethinking_Change__How_Transformation_Happens.mp4" title="Rethinking Change" description="This short video talk was created with Google’s Notebook LM, using material from this chapter." poster="" break="yes" showtranscript="no" showdescription="yes" showpanel="yes" status="on"]...[/InsertMP4]