Figma takes its AI design tool offline after embarrassing copying incident
Figma has temporarily disabled its new AI-driven design tool Make Design following accusations that the design copied Apple’s Weather app.
The issue was brought to attention by Andy Allen, founder of NotBoring Software, on X who found that the tool produced designs that looked remarkably similar to those of the Weather app on iOS.
Allen took to the social media platform to express his concerns that Figma’s tool is “heavily trained on existing apps,” something Figma CEO Dylan Field denied.
After creating three separate prompts, each with the same results, Allen concluded that the design tool had copied the Apple Weather app.
In response, Field said shared: “The Make Design function is not trained on Figma content, community files, or app designs.”
Field blamed the low variability of the off-the-shelf LLMs and commissioned design systems for the failure, noting that the tool has been temporarily disabled until the company can “stand behind its output.”
Make Design, introduced at Figma’s recent Config conference, generated user interface layouts and components from text prompts. Promoted as a tool to help developers quickly draft and explore design ideas, Allen’s findings suggest that the tool could inadvertently reproduce existing app designs, raising a host of legal and ethical concerns.
Beyond 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.
Signaling broader concerns around generative AI, Allen said designers using such tools should “thoroughly vet existing apps or tweak the results so that [they] country not unconsciously [themselves] in legal trouble.”
