Figma, a popular design software company, has temporarily disabled its “Make Design” AI feature following accusations that it was copying the design of Apple’s Weather app. It was flagged following a fact brought to light by Andy Allen, founder of Not Boring Software—the artificial intelligence tool had consistency in layout output that resembled Apple’s Weather app. Allen used his X account to accuse Figma of probably training the tool using already existing apps. Figma CEO Dylan Field strongly denied this charge.
Figma’s software claims to give a “Make Design” feature, which delivers UI layouts and components generated from textual descriptions by users. It was meant to make it easier to experiment with design ideas before actually building the design.
It has been explicit since launch that the component had not been trained on Figma content, be it user files or application designs. Field further clarified in his social media posts that these were wrong accusations relating to trainings using data.
In this eagerness to compete in the AI design space, it seems that Figma has fallen short on stringent quality assurance tests. The incident threw its fuel into the debates within the design community, the fear was that AI tools like “Make Design” would eradicate design jobs once and for all. Others riposted that maybe AI will automate just tasks, so that designers have time to work on more creative aspects.
The discovery by Allen that the AI tool was replicating existing apps drove home the concerns already felt by designers. He warned fellow designers to meticulously check against existing apps or develop extensive modifications to the output generated to avoid possible legal action against them.
Dylan Field Respond to the Figma AI design Feature Controversy
Field responded that “Make Design” used ‘out of the box’ large language models combined with “systems especially commissioned for these models.” He admitted that Logic followed, leading to very little variation in the designs actually produced.
Following Allen’s tweet, Figma very reactively responded to the issue and found the problem lay with the design systems underpinning the AI tool. Field accepted full responsibility for not having assured a more strict QA process had been done and allowing the deadline to get the better of testing.
While Apple hasn’t issued a statement yet, Figma referred queries to Field’s social media posts. The company will be turning off the “Make Design” feature until it has confidence the output from the tool is at a quality bar that it can stand by. The feature will be turned off starting Tuesday and remain disabled until Figma can do an end-to-end quality assurance pass on the mixing design system.
