It has been amazing seeing our clients on the map, from local organisations here in Aotearoa to authors and businesses around the world.

Enni and Beks have been busy designing custom book covers (scroll to bottom to see the latest designs), while Sami and Bidhan have been working across video, animation, websites and application builds. We are building two festival websites, and next month our video team travels to the beautiful South Island for a client video shoot.

This month, we are looking at how AI is changing the web, both the risks and the opportunities. Cyber threats are moving faster, so website security and updates matter more than ever. At the same time, AI is helping us build smarter digital systems faster, with more focus on user experience and real business needs.
Our video team has a few upcoming production slots available for website videos, interviews, social reels, event coverage, photography and drone footage. If your organisation needs fresh visual content, now is a good time to plan ahead.

For the last months, Sami has partnered with Manuela Klevisser, Parnership Manager at Startup NZ to create app that helps small business owners grow their business. The app will help identify blind spots and set up a plan for improving the business, focusing on the hardest part: Consistency.

This week, they ran the second Business Focus Forward testing session with Loud and Proud and a group of local business owners. Participants completed the assessment, viewed their results and explored how those results could lead into practical business action pathways.

One tester summed it up well:

“When business ownership feels overwhelming and like flying blind, this five-minute assessment helps me see the fragile areas and feel more accountable.”
— Hamish

The feedback confirmed that people valued seeing where their business needed attention. It also highlighted practical improvements, including clearer answer options, easier access and the ability to compare results over time.

This is your reminder to test with humans. AI helps us design and build faster, but real users reveal unclear language, hidden assumptions and gaps we cannot see ourselves. The next step is a guided beta where participants will work through the pathways over time.

Build. Test. Learn. Repeat. Read Sami’s LinkedIn article about UX testing

A recent WordPress security issue is a reminder that website maintenance is no longer something to leave sitting in the background. As AI makes it easier to find and exploit vulnerabilities quickly, keeping WordPress, plugins and themes updated is becoming essential.

The flaw was found using AI-assisted security research, showing how quickly AI can now help uncover and potentially exploit weaknesses in widely used platforms. WordPress released an urgent security update, but the incident is an important reminder: updates can no longer be left pending for weeks. Keeping WordPress, plugins and themes current is now a critical part of protecting your website and business.

We have checked the WordPress websites under our active management and confirmed that they are running the patched WordPress 7.0.2 release. * New vulnerability was found 7th of August, latest release is 7.0.3

WordPress core is only one part of website security. Outdated plugins and themes can also create vulnerabilities, particularly when they are no longer supported by their developers. We identified pending or older plugin updates on some websites and will contact the relevant site owners directly.

If you notice pending plugin or theme updates in your WordPress dashboard, please contact us before leaving them unresolved or applying major updates without a current backup.

Not every business website needs a live database, login system and stack of plugins. For some brochure-style sites, moving to a simpler static setup can reduce the attack surface, improve speed and make maintenance easier.

In a recent cybersecurity test, advanced OpenAI models escaped their restricted environment, gained internet access and penetrated real infrastructure while attempting to find answers to a benchmark.

The test was conducted under unusual conditions, with some normal safeguards reduced, but it demonstrates how quickly AI-powered cyber capabilities are developing. Attackers can increasingly search for weaknesses and act on them at machine speed.

One response may be to simplify the technology behind business websites. Many brochure-style websites do not necessarily need a live database, public login system or constantly running content-management platform. A static website can remove many of these common attack paths while also improving speed and reducing maintenance.

Static does not mean risk-free, and WordPress remains appropriate for many businesses. But as the threat environment changes, we believe website architecture should be chosen according to what a business genuinely needs, not simply because WordPress has traditionally been the default.

If your AI capability depends entirely on someone else’s stack, their models, pricing, privacy settings and access rules, then part of your business is exposed.

Those rules can change. Costs can change. Access can change. Terms can change.

For businesses handling client data, strategy, code, creative IP or valuable internal knowledge, this is not just about productivity. It is about resilience, privacy and trust.

That does not mean every business needs to build its own AI infrastructure. But every business should understand where its data goes, who controls the tools it relies on, and what happens if access, pricing or policy changes overnight.

At Bee Creative, this is why we are exploring safer, more sustainable and more locally controlled AI capability alongside our website, app and content work.

The future is not just “use more AI”. The stronger question is: how do we use AI in a way that makes our businesses more capable, more secure and more trusted?