Figma AI: Empowering designers with intelligent tools

Watching the keynote, the feature where it spits out a design based on a prompt seems like a gimmick. If it doesn't work with MY design system (as opposed to curated design systems like MUI or Bootstrap or whatever) then it's useless. It's also probably not ready to design complex applications, as opposed to brochure websites and apps that fit into very common templates.

The AI-powered search features seem really promising, as finding the right design file is a problem I face every day. What they showed was the ability to paste a screenshot (e.g. from production) and have it find where that design came from, or use a text search to do the same. That's something that'll make me squeal with joy if it actually works.

Filling in mock data in designs is also a big potential quality of life improvement. The domain I work in is so specific that I'm not sure it'll be of practical use to me, but I'm hopeful.

All in all, I'm glad about the parts where they are trying to target some specific pain points with AI, skeptical about the rest.

Naming layers has been a problem for decades. There are even memes about it. With the advent of AI, we all knew this is a perfect match where AI can help from day one. Happy to see it arrive to Figma now.

They have not yet started doing any training on user content and I applaud them for that. (They've only used public community files so far.)

However, they are headed that way to support advanced AI features. Quoting Fimga:

   Two important highlights: First, all admins have control of whether their team’s content data is used for training. Second, participation in AI content training is not required to use Figma or Figma’s AI features. Learn more about our approach to training.

PLEASE, PLEASE make that opt-in versus opt-out. Do the right thing here, Figma!

What happened to MS Office and copilot integration? They gave impressive demos[1] showing users create high-quality PowerPoint with good design and content just by prompting a few sentences more than one year ago. I don't have Copilot license so I don't use it by myself. If someone uses it daily, how good is it?

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7xTBa93TX8

It looks like a solid set of updates. A lot of designers seem worried, but I’m not sure they need to be. It was always the case you could get prebuilt templates and the like, but companies still prefer to have professional designers. I imagine it’ll make prototyping much faster

All that page demonstrates is that Figma facilitates a lot of design features that have no utility for the user.

Is it just me or did gen AI allow companies to cheat a lot more with their demos/showcases? I feel like there’s absolutely no way to tell if what’s shown is representative, cherry-picked or outright faked. I mean, it’s non-reproducible by nature, so it even gives plausible deniability to unscrupulous marketing departments.

I’d rather watch a YouTuber or streamer do a real project in a tool too see if and how it works in practice.

Late to this conversation, but I'm a designer and very excited about these new AI features. They address tedious work that most designers don't want to deal with. It reminds me of why Figma won love from the design community in the first place - because they innovate on systems using emerging technology. They have always made designers more effective and relevant, rather than maintaining status quo simply because enterprise paying customers are stuck in their ways.

Despite the ethical concerns, it would be very useful if Figma offered an option for large organisations to train an organisation-level model that does not share data with the rest of the world. I believe the opt-in rate would be much higher.

What's Figma? They don't make it very clear.

Any time I see "AI" bullshit now, I'm going to post this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvDCk3pY4qo

I honestly just want a good AI vector icon generator. An i2i one, not just text prompting one.

Every AI tool being released by 3rd parties is being blacklisted by my company. The primary reasoning is around sharing data with tool itself. On the other hand, if my clients allow them, there’s a long review and approval process followed by continuous audits.

Is anyone else running into this at their companies? I look at these tools and get excited but I’m continuously being blocked from using for work.

instead of AI companies should call next generation scalffoulding

It's quite telling that they are showcasing a quite badly working AI feature that no one really asked for.

And yet pricing controls that people actually want? Oh 6 to 12 months maybe