Aspects of the subject disclosure may include, for example, obtaining a natural language instruction, interpreting the instruction to obtain a machine interpretation, and analyzing the machine interpretation to obtain an intent of the natural language instruction. An actionable command adapted to cause a digital manipulation tool to digitally manipulate a content item is determined according to the intent of the natural language instruction. The actionable command is provided to the digital manipulation tool to obtain the manipulated content item. Other embodiments are disclosed.