Canva Steps into Generative AI with Design-First Image Model Craft
Canva has introduced Canva Craft, its first AI model that can create images. Canva's own research team built it. Until now, Canva has mostly used AI models made by other companies for its AI-powered features.
Craft puts Canva in the same fast-growing AI image market as Google, OpenAI, ByteDance and Meta. But unlike many of these companies, Canva made Craft mainly for design work, not just for creating photos. It is designed to make posters, presentations, social media graphics, infographics, menus and other images that need carefully arranged text and pictures.
A Two-Step Design Process
Craft creates designs in two steps. First, it reads what the user asks for and plans how the image should look. It decides where things should go, how big they should be compared with each other, which parts should stand out and where to put the text. Canva says Craft is the first basic AI model that Canva Research has built and trained completely from the beginning. Making its own model gives Canva more control over image quality, how designs can be edited, costs and future product plans.
In the second step, Craft creates the image. It can make images with a resolution of up to 2K and supports more than 30 different width-to-height shapes, including sizes chosen by the user. This makes it useful for creating designs for social media, websites, printed materials and presentations.
Canva also explained that planning the image before creating it helps Craft place design elements more accurately. Craft pays special attention to how a design is arranged, which parts are most important and how users can edit the layout. This makes it different from AI image tools made for more general use.
Built for Editable Design
Images made with Craft can be turned into designs with separate, editable parts using Canva Magic, Canva's tool that changes images into editable designs. After creating an image, users can move things around, change the words and adjust the layout.
Canva Craft is now available to everyone who uses Canva through the Dream Lab tab. Users can find it in the bottom-left part of the Canva screen. Developers can also use Craft through Canva's public API, which lets other software connect to it. Canva expects teams that build products to add Craft to marketing platforms, online shopping websites, advertising tools and printing services. This could help more businesses use Craft to create large numbers of designs.