DrupalCon Barcelona 2024 delivered thrilling revelations about how AI will transform Drupal. Dries Buytaert’s keynote highlighted AI-powered innovations that are set to streamline site-building, content management, and migrations. At Smile, we’ve been paying close attention to these developments, especially as they relate to Sobki, our no-code installation profile for Drupal. Let’s explore how these AI advancements will shape Drupal's future and what this means for Sobki and the broader Drupal ecosystem.

The CMS Drupal Is Dead, Long Live Drupal CMS

Drupal has always been a powerful, flexible platform for developers, but its complexity often posed challenges for non-technical users. In response, Drupal CMS, the product created through the Starshot Initiative, is now being branded as a no-code solution, making it more accessible to a wider audience. This shift aligns with our vision for Sobki, a product we developed at Smile to help users harness Drupal without needing to dive into complex coding.

Where Drupal’s evolution and Sobki intersect is in the incorporation of AI-driven tools. Sobki already includes AI on its roadmap with features like automatic translations, blog post summarization, and media description generation to ensure content is accessible. Following the announcements at DrupalCon, we’re particularly excited to experiment with AI agents to see how they can complement our design system first approach in Sobki, further streamlining the user experience.

AI is the New UI: Reimagining User Interaction

A key message from the DriesNote is that AI will revolutionize how users interact with Drupal. The introduction of AI agents promises to handle tasks like content configuration, site building, and even module selection—all with minimal human intervention. For Sobki, this is a thrilling development. Our mission has always been to make Drupal more accessible through a no-code interface, and the AI-driven UI is opening new paths toward that goal.

From the content creation point of view, Sobki’s existing no-code framework, combined with AI-powered tools, will allow marketing managers and content creators to focus more on their strategic goals while letting AI take care of newly automatable tasks. We see this as an opportunity to empower marketers to fine-tune AI features with "corporate prompts"—predefined templates aligned with brand guidelines. At Smile, we envision this feature becoming a cornerstone of responsible AI use, allowing teams to customize AI scope within their content strategies, without sacrificing control.

Responsible AI: Upholding Open-Source Values

At Smile, our dedication to a responsible and sustainable IT strategy is unwavering. The Responsible AI policy introduced by Dries fits perfectly with our values. By emphasizing human-in-the-loop oversight, transparency, and choice of AI models, the Drupal community ensures AI is deployed in an ethical manner that aligns with open-source principles.

Sobki will build on this vision by offering tools within the back office that enable marketing managers to fine-tune AI usage for their teams. Whether it’s setting corporate prompts, allowing free-form prompts for advanced users, or providing real-time feedback on usage costs, Sobki ensures that AI remains a tool that enhances productivity rather than replaces human oversight. This focus on responsible AI use will help organizations manage AI effectively without compromising on ethics or costs.

AI-Assisted Content Migration: A New Frontier

Content migration is often one of the most complex and time-consuming aspects of a site redesign, especially when the existing content represents significant value—whether for SEO or simply for site relevance. The announcements about AI-assisted content migration are a major advancement that we are eager to integrate for Sobki users. Many companies upgrading to a newer version of Drupal, such as those moving from Drupal 7, face the challenge of migrating large volumes of unstructured content.

While Sobki is an excellent tool for quickly and cost-effectively rebuilding websites, content migration can remain a daunting task, particularly when dealing with unstructured content formatted in rich-text editors. AI-assisted migration offers a promising solution by automating the conversion of unstructured content into structured formats. However, we remain cautious. This technology is still young, and the accuracy of AI in migrating thousands of pages has yet to be fully proven. At Smile, we believe it’s essential to balance innovation with caution, ensuring that business-critical content, such as blog posts created over the past decade, is migrated safely without compromising editorial value.

Flexibility with Swappable AI Models: Tailoring AI to Your Needs

One of the standout announcements from the DriesNote was Drupal’s commitment to swappable LLMs (Large Language Models). This flexibility means users won’t be locked into a single AI provider, ensuring freedom and control over data management. For Sobki, this feature aligns with our emphasis on standardization, but with options for customization.

In Sobki, we plan, by default, to use managed AI services from cloud providers, aiming a balance between performance and cost for the end user. However, for more customized projects based on Sobki as a starter kit, the flexibility of swapping between AI models will be a game-changer. This will allow us to tailor AI capabilities for specific industry needs, further enhancing Sobki’s ability to cater to diverse business cases while ensuring vendor independence.

The Future of Drupal: AI-First and User-Centric

The innovations announced at DrupalCon Barcelona make one thing clear: Drupal’s future is AI-first, and Sobki is poised to be at the forefront of this transformation. By integrating AI into everything from site-building and content management to ethical AI governance, Sobki will offer users a powerful, intuitive platform to create and manage their digital experiences.

At Smile, we believe that AI should empower users, not replace them. We’re excited to integrate these AI advancements into Sobki in a way that enhances productivity, streamlines workflows, and upholds the core values of transparency, flexibility, and responsible AI use. As Drupal continues to evolve, Sobki will evolve alongside it, offering organizations a robust, future-proof solution for their digital projects.

Driving Innovation: Sobki and the Next Wave of AI in Drupal

DrupalCon Barcelona 2024 set the stage for an exciting AI-driven future for Drupal. At Smile, we’re thrilled to see how these innovations align with our work on Sobki, particularly in areas like AI-powered site-building, content migration, and ethical AI usage. The future of Drupal is not just about making the platform more powerful—it’s about making it more accessible, ethical, and adaptable to the changing needs of businesses and organizations.

With Sobki, we’re committed to delivering a no-code solution that leverages the best of Drupal’s AI advancements, ensuring that our clients can build amazing digital experiences while keeping control of their data, their ethics, and their creativity. Long live Drupal CMS, and long live the AI-powered Sobki!