**Canva Launches Advanced AI Design Model and Suite of New Features**
Canva, the popular creative suite company, has unveiled a series of major updates aimed at enhancing its platform’s capabilities and solidifying its position in the competitive design software market. On Thursday, the company announced the launch of its own proprietary AI-powered design model, significant enhancements to its AI assistant, and tighter integrations across its suite of productivity tools. These moves reflect Canva’s ongoing efforts to provide both amateur and professional designers with more powerful, flexible, and user-friendly tools.
**A Next-Generation AI Design Model**
At the heart of Canva’s latest announcement is the introduction of its own foundational AI model, specifically trained on Canva’s vast library of design elements. Unlike conventional image-generating AI tools that produce flat, uneditable images, Canva’s new model is built to generate designs composed of fully editable layers and objects. This innovation allows users to manipulate individual elements within a design—such as text, shapes, and images—providing far greater flexibility and creative control.
The new model seamlessly operates across a variety of design formats, including social media posts, presentations, whiteboards, and websites. According to Robert Kawalsky, Canva’s global head of product, this evolution addresses a common frustration among users: while previous AI models could create impressive visuals via text prompts, they often required users to “prompt their way” to a final result, which can be cumbersome and limiting for visual tasks. Canva’s approach aims to blend the convenience of AI-generated suggestions with the hands-on control that designers expect, allowing users to initiate projects with prompts and then refine the results directly.
**Enhanced AI Assistant and Creative Tools**
Earlier this year, Canva introduced its AI assistant, Canva AI, featuring a chat-based interface that generates visual content from text prompts. With the latest update, Canva AI is now more deeply integrated throughout the platform, accessible within the main interface and directly in the design and elements tabs. This means users can summon the assistant at any stage of their workflow for help or inspiration.
A notable new feature is the ability to tag the AI assistant in collaborative project comments—similar to mentioning a teammate—so it can provide real-time suggestions for text or media. Additionally, Canva AI can now generate 3D objects and replicate the art style of any existing design, making it easier for teams to maintain visual consistency across projects.
**Bringing Data and Apps Together**
Canva has been steadily expanding beyond traditional graphic design, adding new tools to address a broader range of productivity needs. One such addition is a spreadsheet product, which now works in tandem with Canva’s app-building feature. This integration allows users to pull data from spreadsheets directly into custom app widgets, enabling the creation of dynamic data visualizations and interactive dashboards without leaving the Canva ecosystem.
**Introducing Canva Grow: A Unified Marketing Platform**
In a strategic move to cater to marketers and businesses, Canva recently acquired MagicBrief, a company specializing in ad analytics. Leveraging this technology