A few days after announcing that it would use customer content for AI training purposes, Figma is back in the news for a somewhat ironic reason: its AI-generated designs resemble existing popular apps. Who knows? Soon, it could be your designs!
Andy Allen, a user of Figma’s new “Make Design” feature, which is part of the recently announced Figma AI suite, has raised concerns about the originality of the designs produced by the tool. Allen shared his experience on Twitter, demonstrating how the AI consistently generated designs that closely mirrored Apple’s Weather app.
“This is a ‘weather app’ using the new Make Designs feature and the results are basically Apple’s Weather app,” Allen stated. He tried the feature multiple times and reported getting similar results each time.
The AI-generated designs didn’t just share a passing resemblance to Apple’s app. According to Allen, they copied specific UI elements, including “semi-inscrutable daily temperature range bars.”
Allen expressed strong criticism of Figma’s approach, stating,
AI didn’t do this. Figma did this. And they’re handing this feature to designers who trust Figma and will be on the hook when they present a design that, unbeknownst to them, is a blatant rip-off of some existing app.
John Grubber, a well-known UI designer and the blogger at Daring Fireball echoed Allen’s frustrations on design similarity by saying, “Pretty sure I’d fire a junior designer who did this, and I’d be pretty pissed at whoever hired that junior designer too.”
Allen advised designers using the new Make Designs feature to “thoroughly check existing apps or modify the results heavily so that you don’t unknowingly land yourself in legal trouble.”
Figma’s response
Stack Diary reached out to the Figma press team for a comment, who redirected us to this Twitter thread posted by Dylan Field, the CEO of Figma, in response to these accusations.
For starters, Field categorically denies that the Make Designs feature was trained on Figma content, community files, or existing app designs.
Field explains that the Make Design feature uses off-the-shelf large language models (LLMs) combined with commissioned design systems. This approach leads to low output variability, which he mentioned in his keynote speech at the recent Config conference.
Addressing the specific issue raised by Andy Allen, Field states that they identified the problem within hours of seeing the tweet. He attributes this issue to the underlying design systems created for the AI models. Field “takes personal responsibility” for the oversight, citing insufficient quality assurance processes and pressure to meet the Config deadline.
As an immediate response to these concerns, Field says that Figma is temporarily disabling the Make Design feature until it can ensure the quality and originality of its output.
I have asked our team to temporarily disable the Make Design feature until we are confident we can stand behind its output. The feature will be disabled when our US based team wakes up in a few hours, and we will re-enable it when we have completed a full QA pass on the underlying design system.
Dylan Field
Field’s last words were ‘More soon’, indicating that Figma would provide a detailed follow-up. This communication should, at the very least, analyze Andy’s issue and clarify the functioning of the Make Design feature, specifically the legal implications for Figma’s users using this AI-powered tool in their design work.
