Figma takes its AI design tool offline after an embarrassing copying incident

Figma has temporarily disabled its new AI-powered design tool Make Design after allegations that it was copying designs from Apple’s Weather app.

The problem was highlighted by NotBoring Software founder Andy Allen on X who discovered that the tool produced designs that were remarkably similar to those of the Weather app on iOS.

Allen used the social media platform to raise concerns that Figma’s tool was “heavily trained on existing apps,” which Figma CEO Dylan Field denied.

After creating three separate prompts, each of which produced the same result, Allen concluded that the design tool had copied Apple’s Weather app.

In response, Field said divided: “The Create Design feature is not trained on Figma content, community files, or app designs.”

Field blamed the low variability of off-the-shelf LLMs and commissioned design systems for the failure, and noted that the tool was temporarily disabled until the company could “stand behind its performance.”

Make Design, recently unveiled at Figma’s Config conference, generated user interface layouts and components from text prompts. It was promoted as a tool that developers could use to quickly sketch out and explore design ideas. But Allen’s findings suggest that the tool may be inadvertently reproducing existing app designs, raising a whole host of legal and ethical concerns.

Aside from Fields’ comments, Figma has not shared any further information and it’s unclear how long the tool will be offline. Apple has not commented on the matter.

In a sign of the broader concerns surrounding generative AI, Allen said developers using such tools should “thoroughly review existing apps or modify the results so they don’t unwittingly get into legal trouble.”

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