Figma pulls AI tool after criticism that it copied Apple’s design

Figma’s recent Make Designs tool lets users quickly create mockups of apps using generative AI. It’s now been pulled after the tool created designs that looked strikingly similar to Apple’s iOS weather app. Figma CEO Dylan Field posted a thread on X early tuesday morning, detailed information removaltaking the blame for motivating the team to meet the deadlineand defending the company’s approach to developing AI tools.

IN posts on XAndy Allen, CEO of Not Dull Software, has shown how Figma’s Make Designs tool is so close to replicating Apple’s weather app. “Just a warning to designers using the new Make Designs feature that it’s worth double-checking existing apps or heavily modifying the results to avoid unknowingly getting into legal trouble.” Allen wrote.

In an interview Tuesday with Figma CTO Kris Rasmussen, I asked him point blank whether Make Designs had been trained on Apple app designs. His answer? He couldn’t say for sure. Figma wasn’t responsible for training the AI ​​models it uses at all.

“We didn’t do any training on the generative AI function,” Rasmussen said. The functions are “powered by off-the-shelf models and a custom-built design system that we commissioned, which seems to be the fundamental problem.”

That’s basically what he said on X on Monday in response to a user who suggested Make Designs had been trained on existing apps. “As we mentioned, when we launched Figma AI last week, there was no training on that feature or any of our generative features,” he wrote“We are investigating the extent to which similarities are a function of the third-party models we use versus the design systems we have commissioned the models to use, and will address this as needed.”

Field in his own thread: he said it Make Designs is “not trained on Figma content, community files, or app designs,” and noted that “the data training accusations in this tweet are false.” He said the problem with the company’s approach is that “variability is too low.”

According to Rasmussen, the key AI models that power Make Designs are OpenAI’s GPT-4o and Amazon’s Titan Image Generator G1. If it’s true that Figma didn’t train its AI tools but still spits out Apple app lookalikes, that could suggest that OpenAI or Amazon’s models were trained on Apple designs. OpenAI and Amazon didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

Rasmussen argued that Figma didn’t want to provide any training to improve its features until it was open with users about its AI training policy, which it also rolled out last week. Under the policy, users have until August 15 to decide whether they want to opt in to having their content used in Figma training. (Starter and Professional plans have it enabled by default, while Organization and Enterprise plans have it disabled by default.)

I asked if Figma plans to train its own models, which considering new AI training rulesseems like something that’s going to happen. “We definitely see opportunities to improve your design workflows by teaching these models how to design in the context of Figma,” Rasmussen said. However, “we’ll take steps to make sure that our own models, or any tuning we do with open-source models, only learn general Figma design patterns and specific Figma design concepts so that they can be better tools for professional designers.”

I also asked Rasmussen how Figma plans to fix its processes to catch potential problems in the future. “We’re reviewing the design-to-order system to make sure it has enough variability and meets our quality standards,” he said. “That’s the root cause of the problem. But we’ll take extra precautions before we turn it back on.” [Make Designs] to ensure that the entire function meets our quality standards and is aligned with our values.”

Rasmussen also noted that Make Designs is in beta. “Beta builds, by definition, aren’t perfect. But it’s safe to say, as Dylan tweeted, that we simply didn’t see this particular issue. And we should have.”

Rasmussen said Figma expects to re-enable Make Designs “soon.” Other Figma AI features will continue to be available in beta. (You’ll need to sign up for a waitlist to access any of Figma’s AI features.)

Figma is the latest company to come under scrutiny for its approach to introducing AI into its inventive tools. Adobe was forced to make it clear it wouldn’t exploit your work to train its AI after a backlash over changes to its terms of service. And Meta was forced to change its AI labels after photographers complained the senior label was incorrectly applied to real photos.