I just tried this wordpress plugin called magic post thumbnail https://wordpress.org/plugins/magic-post-thumbnail/ which automatically generates a featured image for a post that doesn’t have a featured image.
I’m also using a plugin called auto post thumbnail https://wordpress.org/plugins/auto-post-thumbnail/ that uses the first image in a post as the featured image if there’s no custom featured image set. However, I also do have some posts (such as this one) where I don’t really have any picture or illustration to accompany the post.
Somehow the plugin gets the context of the post and attaches a suitable image. No idea about the image’s provenance though, and the plugin would sometimes (like this post https://blog.parasquid.com/2024/05/29/gem-bin/) get the context wrong (bin is the folder for binaries, not the trash bin).
