Figma pulls AI tool after criticism that it ripped off Apple’s design / Figma says it didn’t train the generative AI models it used and blames a ‘bespoke design system.’

Figma pulls AI tool after criticism that it ripped off Apple’s design / Figma says it didn’t train the generative AI models it used and blames a ‘bespoke design system.’ 

Figma pulls AI tool after criticism that it ripped off Apple’s design

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Figma says it didn’t train the generative AI models it used and blames a ‘bespoke design system'

Figma’s new tool Make Designs lets users quickly mock up apps using generative AI. Now, it’s been pulled after the tool drafted designs that looked strikingly similar to Apple’s iOS weather app. Figma CEO Dylan Field posted a thread on X early Tuesday morning detailing the removal, putting the blame on himself for pushing the team to meet a deadline, and defending the company’s approach to developing its AI tools.

In posts on X, Andy Allen, CEO of Not Boring Software, showed just how closely Figma’s Make Designs tool made near-replicas of Apple’s weather app. “Just a heads up to any designers using the new Make Designs feature that you may want to thoroughly check existing apps or modify the results heavily so that you don’t unknowingly land yourself in legal trouble,” Allen wrote.

In a Tuesday interview with Figma CTO Kris Rasmussen, I asked him point blank if Make Designs was trained on Apple’s app designs. His response? He couldn’t say for sure. Figma was not responsible for training the AI models it used at all. 

We did no training as part of the generative AI features,” Rasmussen said. The features are “powered by off-the-shelf models and a bespoke design system that we commissioned, which appears to be the underlying issue.”

That generally matches something he said on Monday on X in response to a user who suggested Make Designs was trained on existing apps. “As we shared when we launched Figma AI last week, there was no training as part of this feature or any of our generative features,” he wrote. “We are looking into what extent the similarities are a function of the third party models we are using vs. the design systems we commissioned to be used by the models and we will address as needed.”

We did no training as part of the generative AI features,” Rasmussen said. The features are “powered by off-the-shelf models and a bespoke design system that we commissioned, which appears to be the underlying issue.”