Figma Launches AI-Powered Tools to Challenge Adobe, Canva, and WordPress in All-In-One Design Platform Race

Figma is making significant strides in its creative software ecosystem, enabling product designers to complete entire projects without relying on external applications. During the company's Config event today, four new products were unveiled: Figma Sites, Figma Make, Figma Buzz, and Figma Draw. These additions are aimed at addressing the gaps that have previously hindered Figma from becoming an all-in-one platform supporting the entire product design lifecycle. One of the key issues designers faced was the need to use third-party services for tasks such as creating live websites or generating customized, scalable brand imagery. For instance, while Figma Design, Slides, and FigJam were excellent for ideating and prototyping, developers had to turn to platforms like WordPress for web development and Adobe Illustrator for detailed graphics. Figma’s new offerings aim to eliminate these dependencies. Figma Sites, a website builder, seamlessly integrates with Figma Design, allowing users to transform their design projects into fully functional websites. The app offers pre-built layouts, blocks, templates, and interactions to simplify and expedite the website-building process. Users can enhance their sites with custom animations, either by using existing code or by leveraging the AI capabilities of Figma Sites to generate new interaction codes through simple text descriptions, such as "animate the text to fall into place like a feather." Currently, Figma Sites is available in beta for full-seated users, with AI code generation set to launch in the coming weeks and a content management system expected later this year. Figma Make, the company's answer to AI coding tools like Google’s Gemini Code Assist and Microsoft’s GitHub Copilot, is powered by Anthropic’s Claude 3.7 model. This feature enables users to create working prototypes and apps based on textual descriptions or existing designs. For example, a designer can instruct Figma Make to generate a functional music player that displays a spinning disc when a new track plays. Specific elements, such as text formatting and font style, can be fine-tuned using additional AI prompts. Figma Make is also in beta, available to full-seated users, and the company is exploring integrations with third-party design systems to further expand its utility. Figma Buzz, a marketing-focused design app, aims to streamline the creation and publication of brand content. Similar to Canva’s design platform, Figma Buzz allows teams to produce brand-approved templates, styles, and assets, which can be quickly assembled for email campaigns, social media posts, and advertising. The app incorporates generative AI tools for creating and editing images using text prompts and can import data from spreadsheets to bulk generate numerous image assets. Figma Buzz is available in beta to all users, providing marketers with a powerful tool for consistent and efficient brand communication. Lastly, Figma Draw is a vector design app designed to compete directly with Adobe Illustrator. This tool simplifies the creation of custom visuals, logos, and scalable images, allowing designers to stay within the Figma platform for all their graphic needs. Figma Draw includes various brushes, texture effects, and vector editing tools, making it a robust solution for product design projects. It is now generally available for full-seated users as a toggle in Figma Design, with select features accessible in Figma Sites, Slides, and Buzz. While Figma's new suite of tools may not match the breadth of Adobe’s Creative Cloud ecosystem, Figma Draw marks the first time the two companies are in direct competition, particularly since Adobe discontinued its XD product design platform. The introduction of these tools also adds fresh options to the creative software market, given that Adobe’s proposed $20 billion acquisition of Figma was blocked by regulatory competition pressures. These updates signify Figma's ambition to provide comprehensive solutions and challenge established players in the creative software industry, offering designers a more integrated and efficient workflow.