Figma, the collaborative design software company, has quickly pulled out its new Make Designs AI tool after numerous individuals cited its resemblance to Apple’s iOS weather app. Andy Allen, the founder of NotBoring Software, which makes a suite of apps that includes a popular, skinnable Weather app and other utilities, was the first to call out Figma after testing the product with repeated results.
In his X post, Allen showed the uncanny resemblance: “Just a heads up to any designers using the new Make Designs feature that you may want to thoroughly check existing apps or modify the results heavily so that you don’t unknowingly land yourself in legal trouble.”
It prompted Figma to temporarily pull out its Make Design tool only a week after its reveal at Figma’s Config conference, where they mentioned the product as “Just describe what you need, and the feature will provide you with a first draft”.
Also Read: Sergey Brin Addresses Gemini AI Image Controversy: ‘Messed Up’
Figma CEO Dylan Field and CTO Address Their Faults
With the escalation of the event, Figma CEO Dylan Field took to X himself to address the removal, blaming himself for pushing the team to meet a deadline and defending the company’s approach to developing its AI tools. In his post, he wrote: “Within hours of seeing this tweet, we identified the issue, which relates to the underlying design systems that were created. Ultimately, it is my fault for not insisting on a better QA process for this work and pushing our team hard to hit a deadline for Config.”
Figma CTO Kris Rasmussen also gave his verdict on the situation, as stated in his interview with the Verge. In his words, he said: “Make Design’s apparent cloning of Apple’s Weather app is a result of the function of the third-party models we are using vs. the design systems commissioned to be used by the models (ChatGPT 4.0 and Amazon’s Titan Image Generator G1).” If true, it means OpenAI and Amazon trained their models using Apple products.
He also reaffirmed that “Figma did no training as part of the generative AI features. As we shared when we launched Figma AI last week, there was no training as part of this feature or any of our generative features and the features are powered by off-the-shelf models and a bespoke design system that we commissioned, which appears to be the underlying issue.”
How Is Figma Responding to Improve Its Tool?
In the same interview with the Verge, Rasmussen answered whether the company will start training its models after their full release. “We definitely see opportunities to really perfect your design workflows by teaching these models how to design in the context of Figma. However, we will be taking steps to ensure that our own models or any fine-tuning we do with open-source models only learn general design patterns and specific Figma design concepts so that they can be better tools for professional designers.
As for how to prevent a similar situation from occurring again, he responded: “We’re doing a pass over the bespoke design system to ensure that it has sufficient variation and meets our quality standards. That’s the root cause of the issue. But we’re going to take additional precautions before we re-enable Make Designs to make sure that the entire feature meets our quality standards and is consistent with our values.”
Before ending the interview, Rasmussen reiterated that Make Designs is still in its Beta phase and Betas, by definition, are not perfect. However, it’s safe to say, as Dylan shared in his tweet, that we simply didn’t catch this particular issue. And we should have.”
Related: Google Temporarily Pauses Its Gemini AI Image Generator After False and Racial Historical Depiction
Why Is AI Bad in Creative Tools?
Take Figma’s incident as an example; AI tools can inadvertently produce outputs that closely mimic existing works, leading to potential copyright infringements. Moreover, the question of who owns the rights to AI-generated content can be complex and legally ambiguous.
Some designers came forward during the incident, stating that Make Designs would lead to job displacement in creative industries and an oversaturated market where it’s harder for individual creators to stand out. On the other hand, others countered that AI would help eliminate a lot of the repetitive work that went into the design, as it would help generate a multitude of design variations, concepts, or compositions, providing a starting point or inspiration for human creators.
With everything considered, AI in creative tools is still a grey area as it is heavily frowned upon by the community, but there is little legally wrong about it yet. For more up-to-date news, follow our Facebook page for timely updates.
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