Figma is launching a collection of AI-powered features to enhance creativity

Figma, the popular collaborative design platform, has announced a suite of AI-powered features to empower designers by providing sources of inspiration, spaces for quick experimentation, and automation of repetitive tasks. These tools, dubbed Figma AI, aim to revolutionize how designers work in Figma, from ideation to prototyping.

Some of the most notable Figma AI tools include

1. Visual and Asset Search: The new visual search allows users to select an area of their canvas, upload an image, or input a text prompt describing what they are looking for, and Figma will return visually similar results across every file that users can access. Eventually, this feature will extend to community files to enable the discovery of new visual resources. The AI-enhanced Asset search makes it possible to search assets by function, rather than by memorizing their names. Thus, by leveraging semantic meaning and context understanding, searching for something like "primary button" will unearth all relevant assets, regardless of what the name in the design system is.
2. Productivity-enhancing features include AI-assisted text editing that lets users translate rewrite or shorten texts; realistic content generation to replace generic placeholders within copy and mockups; rapid transitions from static mocks to interactive prototyping; UI layouts and component option drafting from text prompts; and automatic layer renaming.

Some of these features, like prototyping and UI layout generation, are just beginning to scratch the surface of what is possible. Figma emphasizes that these features are designed to address real user problems, going beyond the hype to offer practical solutions. Moreover, the company is committed to responsible AI development, driven by data privacy and protection. Figma AI will be free during the beta period through 2024, with usage limits and pricing to be determined for general availability.

Currently, the Figma AI features are powered by third-party models not trained on private Figma files or customer data. However, the company recognizes the value of training custom models better suited to powering Figma's concepts and tools. To this end, Figma is introducing the option for customers to participate in AI training. Figma is introducing team-level settings for AI training data opt-in, with different default options for various plan tiers: Starter and Professional plans are opted in, with a choice to opt out, while Organization and Enterprise plans are opted out by default. Participation in AI training is not necessary to be able to use Figma or any of its features. Figma is starting training on August 15, and customers' preferences about training will go into effect then.