Canva AI 2.0 launches with automated workflows and app integrations to streamline design

Canva's AI assistant can now call various tools to make designs for you | TechCrunch

The core promise of new AI platforms is that you can describe your task to the AI assistant, let it plan the task and use the relevant tools for you, and keep your preferences in mind for future tasks. This is especially important for design professionals, as they want to have a predictable, automated workflow for creating content and media assets. Canva is leaning into this paradigm in the latest version of its Canva AI assistant, which uses its AI model to let users create editable designs with text prompts. Users can describe what they want it to make, and the bot will call the required tools and come up with a few options. The assistant uses layers to make designs, which gives users the flexibility to tweak different aspects of the final product as they see fit. The update comes as Canva has been working on making its AI assistant central to users' workflows and adding more features such as image generation and website generation. Canva's competitors also seem to be working towards a similar goal. This week, Adobe launched a Firefly AI assistant that can use the company's various apps to do tasks, and Figma last month baked in support for AI agents in its platforms with an MCP server. Canva's co-founder and COO, Cliff Obrecht, noted that while many companies are trying to merge workflows, businesses prefer to execute the final steps of editing and publishing on Canva. "I think a lot of small businesses start and end their day, and they'll do a lot of their workflows completely, in Canva," Obrecht said. "We also work incredibly well with Anthropic, Google and OpenAI, so if someone is doing their agentic workflows in those products, they can call Canva, get content, and they can get it back into those LLMs. But they always need to end up doing the final mile of editing, collaboration and deployment. That's where we really are strong," Obrecht added. While a large chunk of Canva's revenue comes from individual and small teams, its enterprise business is showing promising growth of 100% year-on-year, Obrecht said. He added that the company, most recently valued at $42 billion, per PitchBook, will likely go public next year. As part of this update, Canva is also adding integrations with Slack, Gmail, Google Drive, Calendar and Zoom, so users can choose to allow the AI bot to build context by reading email, conversations, files, and meeting data. The company is adding a web research skill, too, so the AI bot can browse the internet to do tasks for you. The update also adds scheduling as a feature, so you can tell the AI bot to schedule repeatable tasks to run in the background. This feature will only create a draft that you can review and post, though. Canva is refining its existing AI tools, too. Its AI code generator can now import HTML, and users can use text prompts to describe the kind of spreadsheets they want to generate. The company says that it has improved its AI models' efficiency, claiming that its Lucid Origin image-generation model is now 5x faster and 30x cheaper, and its 12V image-to-video model is 7x faster and 17x cheaper. Canva AI 2.0 is launching in research preview this week, and the company plans to make it available to all users in the coming weeks.

Canva Really Wants to Be Your Workplace AI Bestie

In the age of generative AI, it seems like every tech company has become an AI company overnight. Creative companies aren't immune, as Canva proved this week with the launch of what it calls Canva AI 2.0 at its annual Canva Create conference. Canva is no stranger to AI. It's been investing in proprietary AI design models for years and acquiring AI companies such as Leonardo to incorporate into its graphic design program. But this is the strongest sign yet that the company is betting its future on AI. Canva's journey with AI has led to a "really significant shift," Robert Kawalsky, global head of product, told CNET. "We've actually flipped the platform on its head," Kawalsky said. "Over the last few years, Canva was a design platform with AI tools, and it's really now an AI platform with design tools and design capabilities as part of it." The new Canva AI capabilities extend beyond the graphic and social designs the company is known for. It introduced a host of third-party integrations, called connectors, so you can access Canva's AI on Slack, Notion, Zoom, Google apps and more. The idea is to interact with Canva's AI like you would with ChatGPT or Copilot, if that's what you want. You can have Canva's AI prep for and summarize meetings, create files and search the web for insights. You can also schedule it to do agentic tasks in advance, such as send you reminders at the beginning and end of your work days. It's also upgrading its previous AI launches that are more business-focused, including its AI coding, spreadsheet and email assistant. Canva's updated AI experiences are launching now in a research preview, with broader access rolling out over the next few weeks. Canva has always been known for being a more beginner-friendly alternative to creative software programs such as Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator. It made sense when Canva dove into creative AI, which is often touted as a way for non-artistic or beginner creators to make professional-looking content quickly. But creative AI is controversial, especially because many models are built using the work of artists without their permission or compensation. There's no one-click button to turn off Canva AI, which some creators might want. But you can adjust your privacy settings to control the access Canva AI has to your data and your work.

Canva starts previewing a more powerful version of its AI assistant

Adobe isn't the only company releasing a new AI assistant this week. Ahead of its Create event in Los Angeles today, Canva announced Canva AI 2.0. Building on its existing AI assistant, the company is billing the release as its most significant update since the platform first launched in 2013, and the culmination of years of investment to build its own foundational design models. As you might imagine, it all starts with a conversational interface that allows you to describe an idea or goal and the system will start generating a design to match. Under the hood, there's a new orchestration layer that allows the model to use all of Canva's disparate tools to accomplish complex, multi-step tasks. For instance, the company suggests you could use Canva AI to create a multi-channel advertising campaign, and the software will generate everything you need to get that off the ground. If edits are required, the company says Canva AI avoids one of the pitfalls of many other image generation models. It's possible to edit every visual element the system generates, just like if they were created with a traditional image editor. As a result, you can do things like swap out images and tweak fonts without affecting any other part of a design. To bring everything together, Canva has built persistent memory into the tool. The more you use Canva AI, the better the system will get at applying your personal taste and style to future generations. According to the company, it also has a context window that is long enough to maintain coherence until you arrive at a final design. Alongside those enhancements, Canva is adding support for new workflows that expand what you can do with its software, starting with connections that allow its models to pull data from other apps, including Notion, Slack, Zoom, Gmail, Google Calendar and more. Users can also schedule tasks for Canva AI to complete in the background, and the company has even baked in deep research capabilities into the tool. The coding function Canva previously offered has been upgraded to include support for HTML imports, allowing users to bring any HTML file or AI-generated experience into Canva's visual editor to tweak the design of it without breaking things. For brands, the company is also offering a tool that can process their visual identity and apply it to new and existing designs. As a casual observer, it might seem like Canva is trend chasing, but Danny Wu, the company's head of AI, argues the new AI tools represent a natural evolution for Canva. "This is something we've been dreaming of and working towards for quite a while," he tells Engadget. "Even before ChatGPT was a thing, we were thinking, 'what if we don't have a template that matches your needs?' ... So I wouldn't describe this as a pivot or shift, we've been wanting to offer these kinds of capabilities all along as part of our mission to make design simple." If you want to give Canva's new tools a try for yourself, Canva AI 2.0 is available as a research preview starting today. The first 1 million people who visit the Canva website will get first access, with availability gradually expanding to more users over the coming weeks. As before, access to Canva's AI features remains included in the company's free offering, though it's also introducing a new AI Pass add-on that significantly increases rate limits for users.

Canva AI 2.0 introduces memory, connectors, automated workflows - 9to5Mac

At Canva Create today, the company is making its biggest push yet into the agentic design field with the release of the research preview of Canva AI 2.0. Here's what's new. With the introduction of Canva AI 2.0, the platform is launching a unified conversational interface for design, automation, and content creation, based on the company's Proteus, Lucid Origin, and I2V generative image and video models, which are "up to 7x faster and 30x cheaper than comparable frontier alternatives." In practice, today's news means users can now use natural language-based prompts to describe what they need, while Canva's new agentic system generates designs and handles the tools and workflows needed to create, edit, automate, and even publish work across the platform. Here's Canva on the news: Powered by Canva's frontier AI lab and years of investment in foundation models for design, Canva AI 2.0 transforms Canva into a conversational, agentic platform where teams can go from idea to execution in one place. The result is a powerful creative partner across the entire process, from the spark of an idea to the final output. Canva AI 2.0 combines a new architecture layer with workflow tools that extend beyond design generation into research, automation, and task management. The architecture layer powers Canva's core AI experience, with features including, according to the company: On top of the architecture layer, Canva AI 2.0 also introduces workflow features aimed at making the platform more useful for planning, collaboration, and day to day work, beyond the design process itself. These include: Canva AI 2.0 launches today as a research preview, available to the first million users to join in from the Canva homepage. The company says "access will expand progressively to more users over the coming weeks."

Canva now integrates with your work apps so you can get more done without leaving the platform

New connectors let you pull in data from tools like Slack, Gmail, and Google Drive, allowing Canva's AI to turn conversations, files, and more into structured content. In addition to introducing a new conversational, AI-powered design workflow, Canva today announced that it is expanding beyond design with integrations that aim to help users access information from commonly used productivity tools without leaving the platform. The Canva AI 2.0 update is centered around reducing the need to switch between apps while creating and managing projects. Pull data from connected apps With new connectors, users can link Canva to services like Slack, Gmail, Google Drive, Google Calendar, Zoom, and Notion. This allows its AI to pull in context from conversations, files, and schedules to generate relevant content. For example, users can turn meeting transcripts into summaries, convert email threads into structured documents, or generate newsletters based on team activity across Slack. The connectors aim to reduce the friction of moving information between apps and ensure nothing important gets lost in the process. By keeping everything within a single interface, the platform also aims to streamline workflows and save time. Recommended Videos Similar capabilities are already available in other AI tools, which can pull context from documents and conversations in connected apps. However, Canva's approach ties this directly into content creation, allowing users to act on that information without leaving the platform. Content stays consistent and structured across tasks Canva is also adding built-in web research, allowing users to gather and structure information from across the web directly into their projects. Furthermore, a new "Brand Intelligence" feature helps ensure that everything a user generates aligns with their brand's style, tone, and visual identity, reducing the need for manual edits. Additionally, a new "Sheets AI" feature can generate structured spreadsheets populated with relevant data, from project timelines to content calendars. These sheets arrive pre-filled and formatted, ready to use without any setup. Together, these features aim to elevate Canva from a design tool to a more unified workspace, where content creation, data, and context are connected rather than spread across multiple apps. Canva AI 2.0 is launching as a research preview starting today, rolling out to the first one million users who discovered it on the Canva homepage. The company says access will expand to more users over the coming weeks.

Canva is officially 'an AI platform with design tools'

Canva built its 265-million-person audience by being the easy-to-use, template-friendly design tool for everyone. And when generative AI arrived, it quickly integrated the technology. Now, Canva is amongst the leading spenders on compute from platforms like ChatGPT, it's building its own models and acquiring its own AI companies, and it's launching even more AI design features as part of its Canva AI 2.0 release that it's announcing today. But the headline marks a deeper, philosophical shift within Canva: From being "a design platform with AI tools" to becoming an "AI platform with design tools." Connecting with Canva's CEO, Mel Perkins, I asked about the motivation behind this repositioning. In this age of AI, much of the industry has been discussing what you could call either a flattening or a war between the roles of designers, product managers, and engineers. Was Canva responding to this trend?

Canva AI 2.0 aims to reshape how you turn ideas into polished projects

The update introduces a more conversational, AI-driven workflow that helps users move from a rough idea to a full finished projects without switching tools. Canva today unveiled its AI 2.0 update, introducing a more conversational, AI-powered approach to designing and completing projects. The upgrade aims to take users from a rough idea to a polished result more seamlessly, without the need to switch tools. Create designs by simply describing ideas Instead of beginning with templates or blank pages, users can now describe what they want, and the platform generates a fully structured, editable design. This shifts the process from manual building to guided creation, reducing the need to piece things together from scratch. Behind the scenes, Canva's AI uses what the company calls "agentic orchestration" to understand the user's intent and coordinate different tools automatically. Rather than switching between features, users can stay in a single flow, asking the AI to generate things like a multi-channel campaign plan or refine an existing design with simple prompts. Designs stay editable and adapt to preferences The update also focuses on flexibility, allowing users to make targeted edits with natural-language commands. For example, users can ask the AI to swap an image, adjust a headline, or refine a font, and only those elements will change without affecting the rest of the design. This will make it easier to fine-tune outputs without starting over. A new "Living Memory" feature learns user preferences over time, helping keep their work consistent across projects. It can apply their unique style, branding, and past choices automatically, reducing repetitive adjustments. Together, these changes position the platform less as a design tool and more as a creative collaborator that evolves with the user. Recommended Videos Canva AI 2.0 is available as a research preview to the first million people who discovered it on the Canva homepage starting today. The company plans to expand access to more users in the coming weeks.