Talking Drupal #527 - AI in Drupal

Nov 3, 2025

In this discussion, Jamie Abrahams, founder of a Drupal agency and a co-maintainer of the Drupal AI module, dives deep into the transformative role of AI in Drupal. He outlines the exciting Drupal AI Initiative aimed at innovation and community collaboration. Topics include the integration of AI-Powered features, the challenges of migration, and the ethical implications of AI tools. Jamie also reveals plans for modernizing Drupal's core and emphasizes the importance of transparency and human oversight in AI applications within the platform.

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INSIGHT

Organized Corporate Commitment Scales AI Work

The Drupal AI Initiative organizes companies to commit money and developer time to push Drupal AI forward.
Jamie Abrahams says grouping organizations under the Drupal Association scales contribution and coordination effectively.

INSIGHT

Canvas AI Changes The UX Paradigm

Canvas AI plus Drupal CMS enables AI-driven page construction with a focused UX different from traditional Drupal admin screens.
Jamie says this shift unlocks more advanced AI-assisted optimization and page-building capabilities.

ADVICE

Use AI To Accelerate Migrations

Use AI to speed migrations but expect to need developers for final cleanup; aim for ~80% faster developer workflows.
Combine AI extraction with human review and configurable flows (e.g., Flowdrop) to map content into fields and layouts.

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Today we are talking about AI, New Drupal Features, and the future of AI in Drupal with guest Jamie Abrahams. We'll also cover Orchestration as our module of the week.

For show notes visit: https://www.talkingDrupal.com/527

Topics

Exciting Announcement: Object-Oriented Hooks in Themes
The Drupal AI Initiative
Canvas AI and Migration Challenges
AI Powered Features and Future Directions
AI's Role in Drupal vs. Other Platforms
Human in the Loop AI in Drupal
Canvas AI and Human Control
Challenges with Customizability and AI Integration
Transparency and Ethics in AI
Modernizing Drupal's Core for AI
Future of AI in Drupal
Community Engagement and Events

Resources

Flowdrop
- https://www.drupal.org/project/flowdrop
- https://flowdrop.xyz/
Dries blog
- Rethinking drupal in the world of AI
Tool
Paris event
- API days
Pune Event - 29th - 30th November
Tracking
Action API issue

Guests

Jamie Abrahams - freelygive.io yautja_cetanu

Hosts

Nic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan John Picozzi - epam.com johnpicozzi Maya Schaeffer - evolvingweb.com mayalena

MOTW Correspondent

Martin Anderson-Clutz - mandclu.com mandclu

Brief description:
- Have you ever wanted to expose Drupal's capabilities to external automation platforms? There's a module for that.
Module name/project name:
- Orchestration
Brief history
- How old: created in Aug 2025 by Jürgen Haas of LakeDrops, in collaboration with Dries, who some of our listeners may be familiar with
- Versions available: 1.0.0, which supports Drupal 11.2 or newer
Maintainership
- Actively maintained
- Security coverage
- Documentation site
- Number of open issues: 11 open issues, none of which are bugs
Usage stats:
- 3 sites
Module features and usage
- With the Orchestration module installed, external systems can trigger Drupal workflows, call AI agents, and execute business logic through a unified API
- The modules functions as a bi-directional bridge, so Drupal events like content updates, user registrations, or form submissions can also trigger external processing
- Using the Orchestration module with the Activepieces automation platform in particular was featured at about the one hour mark in the most recent Driesnote, from DrupalCon Vienna, and we'll include a link to watch that in the show notes. The complex example Dries shows is pulling content from a Wordpress site, using AI to evaluate whether or not each post met certain criteria, and then conditionally calling one of a couple of ECA functions, in addition to using AI to rewrite the incoming content to change Wordpress terminology into Drupalisms
- Under the hood Orchestration provides an endpoint that will return a JSON list of services, including the properties that are needed for each service. The external service also needs to provide the username and password for a Drupal account, so you can control what services will be available based on permissions for the Drupal user that will be used
- Already Orchestration works with ECA, AI Agents, Tool API, and AI function calls
- There is also work underway for integrations using webhooks, for integration platforms that aren't ready to directly support Drupal's orchestration services
- In his presentation Dries mentioned that they are looking for feedback. Specifically, they would like feedback on what platforms should have integrations available