Posted by: James Dimmer
11 June 2025
Built by developers, backed by Azure
AI in the Umbraco back office has been on our radar for a while. We've seen many plugins and integrations that feel bolted on, limited or too unpredictable for production use. So we held off. We asked: What would support editors and development teams in the real world?
The result is the Umbraco AI Toolkit, a developer-ready, production-grade integration that embeds powerful, context-aware AI directly into your editorial workflow. Built on Azure AI Foundry, it provides you with complete control over how AI behaves across your platform, whether you're managing a single site or a large, multi-node ecosystem.
Who is the Umbraco AI Toolkit for?
The AI Toolkit for Umbraco is a fully-fledged production tool for:
- Umbraco developers who need clean, composable integrations
- Content editors to manage volume, versioning and tone
- Digital leaders building AI-readiness into their strategy
- Public sector and regulated clients who require auditable, accessible, compliant content generation
What the AI toolkit does
We didn't just wrap an API around ChatGPT and call it a day. Our AI Toolkit is a modular and extensible AI solution that integrates the data and UI layers of Umbraco, providing tangible functionality for both content teams and developers.
Automatic metadata generation
The Toolkit scans page content and auto-generates:
- Meta titles and descriptions
- Open Graph (OG) and social tags
- Image alt text
It uses your defined tone of voice, applies fallback logic where needed, and integrates with Umbraco's content tree, so metadata isn't siloed, forgotten or inconsistent.
Smart content creation (with governance)
Generate structured content, including:
- Paragraphs and headers
- Alt text and summaries
- AI-generated images (via Azure Vision API)
Editors can configure prompts and tone using generation powered by Azure-hosted large language models (LLMs), such as GPT-4 Turbo or Codex. Each generated item is previewed, versioned, and auditable before it goes live.
Tone of Voice (ToV) management
The tone isn't just a prompt. Just like CSS dictates the visual style across various elements, a brand's tone of voice serves to create a consistent messaging style that resonates with its audience. The Toolkit lets you:
- Set tone of voice at page level, section level, or corporate level
- Apply inheritance rules
- View tone audit logs and overrides
- Standardise messaging across teams and geographies
ToV is key for teams working in regulated environments or managing multilingual or multisite solutions.
Why it's different from every other AI plugin
Most AI plugins for CMSs are tightly bound to a single provider, offer minimal Support, and have limited scalability. Here's what sets our solution apart:
Azure AI Foundry integration
With Azure AI Foundry, you're not locked into one AI model or vendor. Select your chosen large language model (LLM), configure the throttling settings, and train on your data.
The ability to control costs and compare results between LLMs is important for ensuring that we meet specific compliance or performance requirements. Cost control helps maintain budgetary constraints and assists in evaluating the effectiveness and efficiency of different models.
Built for DevOps and CI/CD
The Umbraco AI Toolkit supports:
- CI/CD pipelines
- Multi-environment config
- Custom content types and nested block support
It behaves like a proper software component, not a script injection or browser extension.
Extensible API for custom use cases
Use the Toolkit's API to:
- Trigger generation on content publish
- Validate generated content via workflow steps
- Build custom prompts or ML models for specialised content types (e.g. financial commentary, legal summaries)
Get started – Free Community Edition
You can try the Toolkit now via NuGet or the Umbraco Marketplace. Just plug in your Azure OpenAI credentials and start using the built-in tools.
Supported plans for growing teams
If you're already working with Growcreate or want a fully supported deployment, we offer Professional and Enterprise tiers:
- Managed hosting and SLAs
- Content-aware generation (based on your structured data)
- Secure Natural Language Search
- Support for multilingual AI prompts
- Integration with SharePoint or internal knowledge bases
What's next?
The Umbraco AI Toolkit isn't a one-off. We're actively developing:
- A/B tone variant testing for optimisation workflows
- Private model training using your SharePoint or web content
- Editor Assist inside Engage for micro-content generation
- Deeper integration with Growcreate's Digital Support and Innovation Stack
See it in action?