Artificial intelligence is rapidly reshaping how organizations design, build, and manage their websites. But has it reached a point where it can be let loose to fulfill all your web design desires? Not really.

Some web companies may promise law firms, nonprofits, and other professional organizations everything they need with faster development through 100% AI builds. But these promises should be taken with a grain of salt. While AI can be a powerful tool, it’s also a risky one if used without proper safeguards.

At LaFleur, we’ve seen firsthand how AI can help teams design and build smarter websites but also create significant risks when used improperly. Without the right infrastructure, redundancy, and testing environment, AI can break your site, create code incompatibilities, and cost your organization significant time and resources to fix.

Let’s look at how to take advantage of AI’s strengths without falling into the common traps.

The Allure (and Danger) of AI Website Builders

Many website platforms advertise AI integration. Some even promise to “build your entire website” in minutes. The reality, though, is far more complicated.

Most AI tools can easily generate a website frame: a basic layout, color scheme, and landing page copy. But when it comes to functionality like user logins, e-commerce, or dynamic content management, these tools often fall short.

That’s because most web builders—especially WordPress—weren’t built from the ground up for AI. Even platforms starting to add AI capabilities tend to use “wrappers” around AI models rather than true integrations. These add-ons can generate code or designs, but they don’t deeply understand the site’s architecture or plugin ecosystem.

WordPress and the AI Evolution

WordPress remains a leading platform for law firms and professional organizations. It’s flexible, SEO-friendly, and built for content management. But as AI becomes more prevalent, WordPress is still catching up.

We’re starting to see promising developments like WordPress’s Model Context Protocol (MCP), which aims to let AI tools better understand your website’s structure and context. However, even these integrations “don’t work well with builders” yet.

Our advice: use blocks where you can. Prebuild reusable sections and components. Once those are set, AI tools can help with customization and design iteration. AI performs especially well in UX and UI refinement, layout optimization, and accessibility improvements, such as generating code for both dark and light modes.

What AI doesn’t do well yet is maintaining backend stability, integrating secure logins, or safely handling sensitive user data.

AI as a Design Partner, not a Site Builder

When starting out, it can help to think of AI more at this point as a digital design assistant than your lead developer.

We’ve found that AI works beautifully in platforms like Figma for early build work. It can propose layout adjustments, color palettes, and user flow optimizations. Once you’ve created a structure manually or within your design tool, AI can enhance and refine it.

But the manual foundation still matters. Human developers need to establish the right structure, architecture, and accessibility framework before AI enters the picture.

Here’s a smart workflow:

Use Figma + AI to design the UX/UI.

Manually build structure and logic in WordPress or another CMS.

Inject AI enhancements like text generation, layout refinements, or accessibility tweaks within an integrated development environment (IDE).

Let’s discuss those last two points a little more.

AI Works Best on Solid Infrastructure

AI can be a great tool when you have the right infrastructure. Unfortunately, platforms like WordPress don’t provide AI-ready environments out of the box. You need to build that infrastructure yourself.

That means:

Maintaining staging environments for safe testing.

Using version control (GitHub once again).

Setting up IDEs.

Committing changes safely and pushing them live only after review.

Once this system is in place, AI can safely accelerate everything from design iteration to content generation to code optimization.

Safe AI Development: Build a Walled Garden

One of the biggest mistakes we see teams make is letting AI “run free” inside their live websites. Even the most advanced AI can misinterpret your site’s code or dependencies.

That’s why we recommend setting up a “walled garden” for AI experimentation. This is a controlled environment where multiple different iterations of AI integration can be tested and applied with no risk of disrupting live systems.

Here’s how:

Use GitHub (or GitLab) to create a reproduction of your website’s codebase.

Branch out different instances of the codebase to test different forms of AI-generated code safely.

Merge only what works after review and validation.

Roll back instantly if something breaks.

Tools like Cursor, TRAE, Windsurf, or Visual Studio Code can help you pull content and code locally, run AI experiments, and commit safe changes. This ensures you have full control and easy recovery options if AI-generated code introduces issues.

Having a place to branch, test, and selectively merge changes can help your developers explore AI-driven improvements without risking downtime or irreversible damage.

AI for Site Modernization

One area where AI shines is in modernizing older websites. When inheriting an outdated site, AI tools can help identify redundant code, fix broken elements, and modernize styling without having to manually comb through every line.

For example, AI can analyze a WordPress child theme and automatically fix deprecated functions or update CSS for accessibility. This allows your team to focus on creative and strategic improvements rather than repetitive maintenance tasks.

Use AI Responsibly for Website Development

For smaller projects that don’t require complex backends or integrations, AI can spin up functional websites in minutes. Tools like Claude or Cursor can build static or lightweight AI-driven sites quickly and efficiently.

But if your site requires advanced capabilities like user accounts, e-commerce, or dynamic content management, it’s better to rely on established, tested modules. WordPress and its ecosystem of plugins are still the most reliable way to manage those features safely.

You can test AI as a bridge to help blocks communicate and optimize code, but you shouldn’t rely on it to replace proven systems.

AI is transforming web development, but it’s not a replacement for solid infrastructure, strategic oversight, or human expertise. For law firms and professional organizations where trust, reliability, and data integrity are mandatory, it’s critical to approach AI website building with caution.

Want to discuss how to proceed with a new or improved website? Reach out to us at LaFleur for a consultation.

Beware of risky AI website building practices