- Canva wants to be considered an AI-focused platform that continues to democratize design
- Asset generation and editing is about to get massively better with layers
- AI is personalized with memory, but stays on brand.
At its Create conference in Los Angeles, Canva unveiled a project two or more years in the making, Canva AI 2.0, marking a fundamental shift in the way its software will be used.
Four years after the company launched Visual Worksuite (now just Visual Suite) with the then-new Docs and an updated version of Presentations, Canva now wants to become an AI platform with design tools, rather than a design platform with AI tools.
In doing so, the company is betting on artificial intelligence and autonomy, which it considers essential to continue its work to democratize design for all.
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Canva AI 2.0 is Canva’s biggest change yet
At the core of Canva AI 2.0 is a three-tier approach to getting things done: At the top is the Visual Suite, which we’ve all become familiar with by now.
However, beneath that is AI and context. Some of the new tools being released and refined in what is essentially the “rearchitecture” of Canva are the same conversational interface throughout the entire design process and two crucial but overlooked benefits in asset generation: layered object intelligence and iterative agentive editing.
Speaking at the event, co-founders Cliff Obrecht and Cameron Adams criticized existing AI chatbots for having to regenerate entire pixels to make edits, doing their best to keep everything else the same. In contrast, Canva AI 2.0 builds an asset into multiple layers and elements, so each part can be edited by AI or a human worker.
As for existing images, including those already generated by AI, importing them into Canva will automatically decrypt them and generate layers for easier reviews.
Crucially, Canva will also be able to generate a memory file for users, teams and organizations (which can be edited and refined) to better personalize content based on preferences, while access to brand guidelines keeps fonts, colors and other rules applied for maximum consistency.
Canva AI 2.0 launches today as a research preview and, in true Canva style, will be available to the first million users who discover it via an Easter egg.
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