Key takeaways

• Umbraco.AI is the AI foundation built into the Umbraco backoffice. It gives administrators full control over AI models, tone, behaviour, and governance before AI is accessible to content editors.
• The governance-first approach means organisations define rules once and they apply consistently across all AI features and all editors.
• For regulated industries (government, healthcare, financial services) this model provides meaningful control over how AI-generated content is produced and what constraints it operates within.
• Editors with AI access can use it for drafting, summarising, improving tone, and generating metadata, all within the boundaries configured by their organisation.

How is Umbraco's approach to AI different?

Most CMS platforms adding AI features focus first on what editors can do with the technology: generate content, summarise pages, suggest metadata. Umbraco takes the opposite approach with Umbraco.AI. The administrator layer comes first. Before any editor can access an AI feature in the Umbraco backoffice, the organisation's AI configuration is in place: which models are being used, what tone and behaviour rules apply, and what governance controls are active. The AI features editors see operate within that defined framework.

What is Umbraco.AI?

Umbraco.AI is the foundation for AI capabilities inside the Umbraco CMS admin panel (the backoffice). It is not a third-party plugin or an optional add-on module layered on top. It is built into the Umbraco backoffice as a core capability.

The foundation layer handles model configuration, tone rules, behavioural guidelines, and governance settings. These are configured by administrators before any AI functionality is exposed to content editors. This separation between configuration and usage is the design principle that makes Umbraco's AI approach distinctive.

What does the Umbraco.AI governance layer control?

The governance configuration in Umbraco.AI covers several dimensions.

• Model selection: which AI model or service is used for each type of task
• Tone and voice: language tone rules that constrain AI output to match the organisation's brand voice
• Behavioural guidelines: what the AI can and cannot do (refuse certain topic types, maintain specific terminology)
• Editor access: which editors or editor roles have access to which AI features
• Content boundaries: rules about which content types AI can assist with

What can editors do with AI in Umbraco?

Once the governance layer is configured, content editors with AI access can use AI assistance within those parameters.

• Content drafting: generate a first draft of a page section or article from a brief
• Summarisation: create summaries of longer content for teaser text or meta descriptions
• Tone adjustment: rewrite existing content in a different tone (more formal, more conversational) within the configured brand voice rules
• Metadata generation: generate SEO titles and descriptions from page content
• Translation assistance: AI-supported translation for multilingual content workflows

Why does governance-first AI matter for WA organisations?

For Australian organisations in regulated industries (government agencies, healthcare providers, financial services) the governance-first model provides meaningful assurance that AI-generated content operates within defined boundaries before it reaches editors.

The risk of AI-generated content that contradicts regulatory guidelines, misrepresents services, or violates brand standards is real. A governance layer that defines constraints before editors interact with AI reduces that risk structurally rather than depending on individual editors to catch problems case by case.

Which Umbraco add-ons work alongside Umbraco.AI?

Umbraco Engage (the personalisation and analytics add-on) works alongside Umbraco.AI to help content teams understand which AI-assisted content is performing well with specific audience segments. Umbraco Workflow (the content governance add-on) ensures AI-assisted content goes through the same approval workflow as manually written content before publishing, maintaining editorial standards regardless of how content was produced.

If you are planning an Umbraco site with AI built in, see how Dapth builds Umbraco websites, or compare platforms in our Kentico vs Umbraco guide.

About Dapth

Dapth is your Perth digital consultancy, building connected digital systems from websites and intranets to applications, software, ERP and AI tools. For more than 15 years we have helped WA businesses, government agencies and organisations unlock advantages like streamlined workflows, increased efficiency, cost savings, new revenue and more powerful marketing.

We start with your organisation, not the technology: your users, your operations and your objectives. Then we connect everything across four areas:

• Digital Consultancy: Digital strategy, service design and UI and UX design that map how your customers, people and systems should work together, before anything is built.
• Customer Experience: Websites and digital experience platforms on Xperience by Kentico (Kentico Gold Partner), Sitefinity, Umbraco and Payload CMS, plus ecommerce.
• Employee Experience: Intranets and employee portals on Microsoft SharePoint, and workflow automation that takes the double handling out of everyday work.
• Operational Systems: ERP with Odoo as our primary platform (we are an Odoo partner), plus custom software, apps and the integrations that connect them.