Meet Figma AI: Empowering Designers with Intelligent Tools | Figma Blog (2024)

Sign up for the beta

Figma AI and UI3 are currently in limited beta and will be rolling out gradually. You can join the beta directly from Figma: Navigate to the bottom of the screen, click on the "?" and select Join UI3 + AI waitlist. Check out our Help Center for more info.

Since we first brought AI features into FigJam, we’ve been thinking about how to harness the power of AI in Figma. As with everything we do at Figma, our main goal is to give you the tools you need to do your best work—to look beyond the hype and find real solutions to real user problems. Through that lens, we’re excited to introduce Figma AI, a collection of features designed to help you work more efficiently and creatively. Whether you’re searching for inspiration, exploring multiple directions, or looking to automate tedious tasks, we’re building Figma AI to unblock you at any stage.

Our AI features will be free for all users during the beta period, which runs through 2024. As we learn how these tools are used and their underlying costs for Figma, we may need to introduce usage limits for the beta. When Figma AI becomes generally available, we’ll provide clear guidance on pricing. Our goal is to help you work more efficiently while also improving these features in a scalable way.

Find exactly what you need with enhanced search

We know that product designers aren’t always starting from scratch. Many Figma users leverage a production screenshot or try to work with components the team has already created. But locating a specific design or component can feel like searching for a needle in a haystack—especially when working across large organizations with complex design systems. We’re introducing two new ways to help you find the jumping off point that you’re looking for: Visual Search and an AI-enhanced Asset Search.

Visual Search lets you find and reuse designs by uploading an image, selecting an area on your canvas, or entering a text query. Figma will instantly surface visually similar designs from across all your team’s files that you have access to. You can then insert the most relevant frames directly into your working file. In the future, this search capability will extend across our community files, making it easier to find and discover great resources from the community.

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In the future, you’ll be able to also search files and assets from the Figma community directly within the editor. Results will include proper attribution to ensure credit is given to the original creator, and let you access the source file or explore more of the creator’s work.

We’ve also significantly upgraded our existing Asset Search functionality in the Assets panel. Figma now uses AI to understand the semantic meaning and context behind your search queries, designed to return the most relevant components and assets, even if your search terms don’t exactly match their names. For example, searching for “primary button” should surface relevant button components, even if they’re named something like “btn_large” in your design system. By going beyond simple keyword matching and learning how design elements are typically used, we’re making it easier to find and use components from your design system in a way that feels intuitive and natural.

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“Search is the perfect example of how AI can pragmatically solve real pain points designers face every day,” shares Marco Cornacchia, a product designer on the feature. “You spend all this time just looking for the right stuff—digging through files, bugging teammates for links, trying to find that one component. With Visual Search, you can instantly retrieve what you need just by describing it in plain language or uploading a screenshot.”

Search is the perfect example of how AI can pragmatically solve real pain points designers face every day.

Search is the perfect example of how AI can pragmatically solve real pain points designers face every day.

Work more efficiently and stay in the flow

“These features are great at removing some of the more tedious parts of the job, enabling designers to focus on the more important jobs like discovery, problem solving, ideating solutions,” says Lee Munroe, Head of Design at OneSignal.

We’re also introducing a set of tools to streamline common design tasks and help you work more efficiently, from image editing and generation to interactive prototyping and, yes, even layer naming.

Translate, shorten, or rewrite text in a click

AI-powered text tools make it easier to iterate on copy and find the right words. “The new rewrite text feature allows me to automate busywork and explore high fidelity ideas faster,” shares Gavin Nelson, a designer at Linear.

Bring designs to life with realistic copy and images

“For me, the tedium of entering stories that not only reflect my overall narrative, but are based on real use cases has been monumental in aligning my team towards our goals,” says Guy Meyer, Senior Staff Designer at ServiceNow. “Realistic data is key to selling stakeholders on the vision you’re driving towards.”

Generate realistic copy and images to bring your designs to life. We know that lorem ipsum and FPO placeholders are a staple for many designers, but there’s no substitute for using realistic copy and images in your mockups. That’s why we’ve introduced AI-powered content generation tools to help you quickly populate your designs with relevant, realistic content. By incorporating text and visuals that look and feel like the real thing, you can create more engaging, persuasive mockups that effectively communicate your design vision.

Additionally, you can now remove image backgrounds without leaving the canvas, allowing you to instantly isolate subjects and create striking visuals without switching tools.

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Move from design to reality faster with quick-click prototyping

By clicking Make Prototype, you can rapidly turn static mocks into interactive prototypes, making it simpler to bring ideas to life and get stakeholder buy-in. Preview prototypes directly on the canvas to streamline iteration and perfect your designs more efficiently.

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Stay organized with automatic layer renaming

Lee Munroe from OneSignal shares, “Figma’s AI features have helped us save time on some of the more tedious design tasks, like naming layers or coming up with dummy text, enabling our team to focus on more valuable impactful design.”

Rename Layers is a seemingly small feature that can save designers hours of monotonous work over the course of a project—helping keep your files organized and developer-ready.

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Generate designs from text prompts

Ka Temple, Senior Product Designer at ServiceNow, was an early tester of Make Designs. “The power to generate first drafts and rewrite text made starting a new project less daunting,” says Ka. “It got my creativity going which sped up my workflow and freed my mind to dream up more unique ideas faster.”

We often talk about the blank canvas problem, when you’re faced with a new Figma file and don’t know where to start. Make Designs in the Actions panel will generate UI layouts and component options from your text prompts. Just describe what you need, and the feature will provide you with a first draft. By helping you get ideas down quickly, this feature enables you to explore various design directions and arrive at a solution faster.

But this is just the beginning. Over time, this feature will leverage design systems, such as Google’s Material 3 kit, letting you generate UI tailored to your unique needs. Eventually, you’ll be able to take your organization’s unique design system assets and patterns to generate on-brand UI. We see this becoming a go-to tool for kickstarting projects and maintaining consistency across products.

A new creative starting line

We’re excited about these new AI features. Some we know you’ll love right away, because they’ll immediately make your workflow better, like naming layers or content fill. Others, like UI and prototype generation, paint a picture of where we want to go—giving users a new creative starting line by making it easier to get to a workable first draft and bring designs to life. Our goal is to solve real pain points and unblock your creativity with tools dialed into your workflow and enhanced by AI.

Our approach to training

All of the generative features we’re launching today are powered by third-party, out-of-the-box AI models and were not trained on private Figma files or customer data. We fine-tuned Visual and Asset Search with images of user interfaces from public, free Community files.

While we’re proud of the AI features we’ve built so far, we see ways to accelerate your work further by developing new models that work more efficiently and effectively with Figma-specific concepts and tools. To make these improvements, we need to train models that better understand design concepts and patterns, and Figma’s internal formats and structure through Figma content.

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.

To make these features more useful, the models we use need to be tuned to the specific ways that designers and product teams work in Figma. We’re committed to building this in a principled way that protects your privacy.

Data privacy and protection

We know how important your data is to you, your company, and your clients. Our model development process is designed to protect your privacy and confidential information.

For all customer data, we:

  • Encrypt all data at rest and in transit
  • Use security measures designed to protect against unauthorized access to customer data
  • Enforce tailored permissions and user access controls around who can view and access your data

We take additional steps to train our models so that they learn general design patterns and Figma-specific concepts and tools—not your content, concepts, and ideas. For example, we de-identify content and redact sensitive information including from text and images.

AI model training

We are introducing a team-level setting where admins can control customer content sharing with Figma for AI training. Customer content includes file content created in or uploaded to Figma by a user, such as layer names and properties, text and images, comments, and annotations. Sharing your customer content with Figma for AI training is optional and your team’s setting preference will go into effect on August 15, 2024. If an admin turns off content training after that, new content and edits will not be used to train AI models.

Starting today, admins can set that content data training preference directly in settings, across all plans.

  • Starter and Professional plans are opted in by default, but can opt out.
  • Organization and Enterprise plans are opted out by default.

Our customer agreements with Organization and Enterprise are typically more complex and include specific requirements and restrictions, which is why we’ve chosen a different default setting for those plans.

No content training will occur until August 15, so you have time to decide. Also, any content generated by Figma AI is considered customer content data. You keep your rights to outputs generated when you use Figma AI.

Usage data

Usage data is distinct from customer content and relates to how Figma is accessed and used. Examples of usage data include technical logs, metadata, telemetry data, and information about how your organization’s content is used (like how many times it is accessed), but usage data does not include your content itself. This data is used in an aggregated, de-identified way to help protect your privacy.

Community files data

Free files in the Figma Community are available under licenses that allow transformation but require attribution. What constitutes attribution in the field of AI is a widely debated topic. Until we decide and transparently communicate our approach, generative models that output design will not be trained on Community files. So far, we’ve used public, free Community files only to improve search use cases, like the new semantic and visual search improvements. We will not be doing any training on paid Community files.

Looking ahead

Our goal is to build AI in service of designers and product teams, while being responsible and clear in our approach. As we combine the power of AI with the wisdom of our creative community, we see a future where AI becomes a true creative partner.

Learn more about our AI feature availability and review how to opt in or out of training.

Our new AI terms and policies take effect on August 15, 2024 and we will send Starter and Pro users an email with the updated Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. If you’re an Org or Enterprise customer, your current customer contract remains in effect; if you choose to opt in to content training, you will be prompted to agree to new AI terms.

Meet Figma AI: Empowering Designers with Intelligent Tools | Figma Blog (2024)

FAQs

Is Figma AI powered? ›

Introducing Figma AI: Empowering designers with intelligent tools. From generating UI layouts to transforming your static designs into interactive prototypes, our new AI-powered features help you focus on bringing your best ideas to life.

How to access Figma AI? ›

Adjust access to AI features across Figma
  1. From the file browser, look for your team's name on the left-side of the page and select All projects.
  2. From the center of the page, click next to your team name and click View settings.
  3. Open the Settings tab and find the AI section.
  4. Toggle AI features on or off.

Why do we use Figma? ›

Figma Design is for people to create, share, and test designs for websites, mobile apps, and other digital products and experiences. It is a popular tool for designers, product managers, writers and developers and helps anyone involved in the design process contribute, give feedback, and make better decisions, faster.

What can you make with Figma? ›

Projects
  • Design a file thumbnail.
  • Create a tooltip component set.
  • Design an interactive button.
  • Create a responsive card with auto layout and constraints.
  • Create a loading animation in Figma.
  • Create an onboarding flow with advanced prototyping.
  • Design a search icon.
  • Create a reusable icon grid.

Is Figma a Chinese company? ›

Figma, a collaborative design software, nicknamed the “Google Docs for designers”, has recently begun freezing accounts associated with Chinese drone maker, DJI. The US-based software company was valued at US$10 billion last year and considered a rival to industry titan Adobe. Inc. due to its cloud-based functions.

Is Figma better than AI? ›

While both tools have overlapping features, such as vector editing capabilities, their main strengths lie in different areas. Adobe Illustrator is the preferred choice for illustrators and artists, while Figma caters to web and graphic designers who prioritize collaboration and interface design.

Who owns Figma? ›

On September 15, 2022, Adobe announced it had entered into an agreement to acquire Figma for about $20 billion in cash and stock, the company's largest acquisition to-date, with Field remaining as CEO.

How to learn Figma for beginners? ›

Today's tutorial
  1. Set up your Figma account. ...
  2. Take a look around the Figma interface. ...
  3. Start a new design file. ...
  4. Create a Frame. ...
  5. Practice zooming in and out. ...
  6. Practice using the hand tool to move around the canvas. ...
  7. Create a Text layer. ...
  8. Create a rectangle and arrange the layers.

Can you convert AI to Figma? ›

How to use:

Preview your illustrator file and check all the fonts in use. (Optional) Install “fonts in use” if you want to maintain the same fonts used in the ". ai" file. Press the “import” button, and you'll have your illustrator file directly in Figma as a fully editable vector.

Is Figma actually free? ›

The modern interface design tool. Figma is a free, online UI tool to create, collaborate, prototype, and handoff.

What is Figma in simple words? ›

Figma is a versatile web design tool that enables real-time collaboration for building interactive user interface prototypes. The tool provides users with the ability to add functionalities including text manipulation, color changes, image adjustments, hovering, scrolling, and animation to their interface assets.

What is Figma best for? ›

One of Figma's major advantages is its accessibility across various platforms. Designers can work on Figma using web browsers, desktop app or mobile app, ensuring flexibility and eliminating the need for constant software updates. This makes Figma a versatile choice for teams working across different operating systems.

Is Figma hard to learn? ›

As with any software, there's a learning curve to Figma, but it's relatively gentle compared to other design tools. Figma's straightforward interface makes it accessible to beginners. However, mastering Figma requires understanding its more advanced features, which can take some time.

What does the word Figma mean? ›

Figma is a well-known web prototyping and vector graphics editor tool used to create visual designs of your ideas. It's ideal for creating design systems and prototyping web and mobile apps.

Why is Figma so popular? ›

Why is Figma so popular? Figma's popularity can be attributed to its collaborative nature, ease of use, and comprehensive feature set. It caters to the modern needs of designers and teams, making it an indispensable tool in today's design landscape.

Can you export Figma as AI? ›

Open your design in Figma. Select Adobe Illustrator (. ai) from the Format drop-down menu in the Export As dialog box. Select the export settings you want and click Export.

What technology is Figma built on? ›

Because our product is written in C++, which can easily be compiled into WebAssembly, Figma is a perfect demonstration of this new format's power. If you haven't used Figma before, it's a browser-based interface design tool with a powerful 2D WebGL rendering engine that supports very large documents.

What does Figma run on? ›

Figma is predominantly browser-based software, which means it can be run on all full desktop operating systems (such as macOS, Windows, or Linux), as well as Chrome OS . Figma also has desktop applications available for both macOS and Windows.

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