A wall of text is less inviting than an article with pictures. This chapter shows you how to have the AI automatically create an editorial-style cover photo and in-article images for every post – no stock photo site required.
Overview
Every article can come with two kinds of pictures: a featured image (the main cover photo shown at the top of the post and in post listings), and optional content images placed between sections inside the article body. Both are generated automatically by AI at the same time the article text is written – you don’t have to design anything yourself.
How It Works
After the article text is finished, the plugin builds an image prompt (a written description of the picture it wants) using details from the article – like its title and topic – aiming for a photorealistic editorial news-photo look. That prompt is sent to an image-generating AI model. This happens in the background, meaning it does not hold up or delay publishing the article itself; the image is attached as soon as it’s ready, sometimes a few moments after the post itself goes live.
Step-by-Step Guide
1. Open the Featured Image panel
Go to AI News Publisher → Settings and scroll to the Featured Image panel.
2. Turn on the featured image
Tick Generate featured image automatically so every new post gets its own cover photo set automatically.
3. Turn on inline content images (optional)
Tick Generate images inside post content if you also want pictures embedded between sections in the body of the article, then set Inline images per post to a number from 0 to 5.
4. Choose your Image provider
Pick OpenAI (DALL-E) or Google (Imagen) under Image provider. This uses the same API key you already added in Connecting Your AI News Engine – no separate image account is needed as long as your text provider supports images.
5. Check the Anthropic warning (if relevant)
If your text AI provider is set to Anthropic, you’ll see a note explaining that Anthropic cannot generate images. In that case, choose OpenAI or Google here and make sure you have a matching API key for that provider.
6. Set the Image model and size
Enter your Image model (for example gpt-image-1 for OpenAI or imagen-3.0-generate-002 for Google) and choose an Image size – Landscape, Square, or Portrait – to match how your theme displays featured images.
7. Customize the prompt template and style (optional)
Edit the Fallback prompt template(used when the AI doesn’t suggest its own image description) and add any extra Style suffix words, like “photojournalistic, natural lighting,” to keep every image visually consistent with a news-editorial look.
8. Save and check a generated post
Click Save Settings, then generate a test post from the Dashboard and open it in the post editor a minute or two later to confirm the featured image (and any inline images) appeared correctly.
Fields Table
| Field Name | Description | Example |
|---|---|---|
Generate featured image automatically |
Turns on AI cover photo creation for every new article. |
Enabled |
Generate images inside post content |
Turns on extra AI pictures placed within the article body. |
Enabled |
Inline images per post |
How many pictures to place inside each article, from 0 to 5. |
1 |
Image provider |
Which AI service generates the pictures. |
OpenAI (DALL-E) |
Image model |
The exact image-generation model name to use. |
gpt-image-1 |
Image size |
The shape/orientation of generated images. |
Landscape (1792×1024 / 16:9) |
Style suffix |
Extra descriptive words appended to every image request for a consistent editorial look. |
“photojournalistic, natural lighting” |
Field Explanations
The built-in image instructions are written to avoid text appearing inside the picture and to avoid sensitive imagery (such as religious deity depictions) unless an article is genuinely about that topic – this helps keep auto-generated images safe for a general news audience by default.
The Fallback prompt template is only used as a backup – normally, the AI writes its own tailored image description as part of the article generation process. The template ensures an image can still be created even if that step doesn’t return one.
Anthropic is a text-only AI provider and cannot create images at all – if you use Anthropic for writing, you must still choose OpenAI or Google specifically for the Image provider setting, with a valid API key for whichever one you pick.
Tips
- Use a consistent Style suffix across all your images so your site has a cohesive, professional visual identity.
- Choose the image size that matches how your WordPress theme crops featured images, to avoid awkward cropping.
- Start with 0–1 inline images per post for fast-moving news content – more than that can slow down page loading for readers.
- Spot-check images on sensitive topics (politics, tragedy, conflict) to make sure they feel appropriate before publishing live.
Common Mistakes
- Selecting Anthropic as your Image provider. Anthropic does not support image generation – image requests will fail.
- Expecting the featured image instantly. Since it processes in the background, allow a short delay after publishing before checking.
- Setting Inline images per post too high. Values above 2–3 can make fast-news articles feel cluttered and slow to load.
- Typing an incorrect Image model name. A misspelled model name will cause image generation to silently fail for every post.