How we're infusing AI into Canva

Canva was made possible by exciting evolutions in technology. In fact, it was the convergence of HTML5 and personal devices that made it possible for us to start democratizing design a decade ago. Today, the huge advancements we're seeing with artificial intelligence have given us the opportunity to once again reimagine the design process.

If you’re an avid Canva user, you might’ve noticed some of the ways we’ve already been harnessing this technology with the recent launches of image generator Text to Image⁠(opens in a new tab or window) and copywriting assistant Magic Write⁠(opens in a new tab or window). Today, we’re excited to introduce a whole new range of magical features that supercharge the Visual Suite⁠(opens in a new tab or window) and empower creative teams to not only work faster, but also smarter.

In September, we focused on what you could design with Canva. The introduction of our Visual Suite⁠(opens in a new tab or window) unlocked entirely new types of design – from websites to whiteboards. Now, we're turning our attention to how you design. These are some of the most innovative features we’ve launched in Canva’s history – with the goal of making the creative journey more accessible, more customized, and more on-brand than ever before. Best of all, they’re also immensely fun to use.

Visualize your design ideas with Magic Design

If you’re struggling with the right design for an Instagram post, presentation, event poster or project one-pager, Magic Design⁠(opens in a new tab or window) breaks the logjam and gets you started. Simply upload an image or select a style and, powered by OpenAI, Magic Design whips up a curated selection of templates made just for you. It’s the easiest way to visualize any design, spark inspiration or discover templates that are uniquely yours.

But Magic Design is much more than just templates: while templates give you a head start, this gets you seconds from the finish line with the click of a button. Magic Design curates a selection of ideal fonts, graphics, and styles to turn your prompts into the perfect design. You can select a style, customize them to your liking, or just finish them off with a few personal touches.

Short on time, can’t find the perfect presentation template, or staring at a blank slide? Magic Design will help you create engaging and on-brand presentations in just a few clicks. Simply describe your idea in a few words and watch as a range of on-brand designs are generated including an outline and content on each slide to get you started.

Magic Design will do the hard work upfront, so you can focus on adding the important details and your own unique touches. It’s the perfect way to kickstart creativity and turn your ideas into a professional Canva Presentation.

Lay out your design in style

Choosing the right layout and overall style for your work can be an important decision, so we’re introducing two tools that do the heavy lifting for you. Layouts gives you multiple professional layout suggestions based on your current content, then automatically applies that to your design when you select the one that fits best.

If you’re designing, but don’t love the overall style, Styles lets you choose a new one and can restyle your entire design with a single click. You can find your style inspiration anywhere. Match the style of an image you like, another recent design, or one of our templates.

Let your imagination flow with Draw

We might not all be born great artists, but sometimes we still need to sketch a diagram, freely markup designs, or add bespoke visual elements to a design. After numerous requests from our community, we’re excited to be introducing a new tool called Draw⁠(opens in a new tab or window) that lets you unleash your creativity by sketching your ideas.

Draw a simple shape like a circle, and the inbuilt shape assistant recognizes what you’ve drawn and turns it into a perfect circle. This works for multiple shapes including speech bubbles, lines, arrows, and more. Now you can easily turn your team's fast thoughts into flowcharts, mind maps, and other formats.

Magic Write just got even more magical

Few things are more frustrating than staring at a blank screen and waiting for inspiration to strike. That’s why we introduced Magic Write⁠(opens in a new tab or window), a copywriting assistant powered by OpenAI for Canva Docs that helps to ease writer’s block and makes writing quicker by generating text based on your prompt.

Today, we’re extending the capabilities of Magic Write by bringing it to every type of design, from websites to presentations, video, whiteboards and more. Whether you need a hand with writing copy for your Canva Website, or an introduction for your Presentation, we’ve got you covered.

We’re also adding a new capability that allows Magic Write to generate content based on existing text – with just a simple prompt, you can expand, summarize⁠(opens in a new tab or window) or rewrite text: turn a long document into an executive summary, make a confident tone more friendly, or broaden a sentence into a paragraph for an essay. But that’s not all: we’ve also added autofill capabilities, meaning Magic Write can generate new text to complete a semi-finished design. All of this is also now available in 18 languages, and we’re now rolling it out for teachers and school administrators too.

Consider Magic Write your personal brainstorming partner, helping you generate anything from blog topics to a to-do list, a catchy name for your newsletter or a list of team-building ideas for your next offsite.

Do more with Text to Image

Since our AI-powered image generator, Text to Image⁠(opens in a new tab or window), was launched last year, our community has watched their words and phrases transform into beautiful images over 60 million times. Now, the next evolution of Text to Image is here. Generated images are much higher quality at over 2K, generation times have reduced 68%, and we've introduced 10+ creative new image styles. It’s also now available across all languages, and we've built a multi-layered set of mechanisms to further improve trust and safety.

Create the perfect image

Strong and captivating images are essential for bringing your designs to life, but sometimes your image needs a few tweaks to make it just right. Our new photo editing tools unlock a powerful and fun way to get picture-perfect results by adding, removing, or changing specific parts of an image with just a few clicks.

Need to turn a summer shot of your holiday house into a winter wonderland by adding snow? Or to change the color of someone's clothing to match your design? The new Magic Edit⁠(opens in a new tab or window) tool can transform an image based on the instructions you provide, like adding something to a scene, or swapping something out.

Also new is Magic Eraser⁠(opens in a new tab or window), a next-level brushing tool that removes unwanted details or objects so you can end up with the perfect image, every time.

Is your image background overexposed, or is the subject in the foreground a little dark? Now you can edit the foreground and background of your image independently. Canva can now automatically detect the background and foreground, giving you precise control to make any adjustments to color and light.

These magical capabilities are part of a broad revamp of Canva’s Photo Editor⁠(opens in a new tab or window) that also includes new and updated features like Auto Crop, Auto Rotate, and Auto Adjust. As always, all of these features are available to you from any device.

Create professional videos with Beat Sync

Video content is a priority across all channels these days, and nothing brings a great video to life like an awesome tune. Syncing video to a beat is one of the hardest parts of video editing, but we’re here to solve that with the launch of Beat Sync⁠(opens in a new tab or window). With Beat Sync in Canva Video, you can automatically align clips to the beat of the music, making your videos look slick and professional, effortlessly.

Beat Sync identifies the beats within a song and converts them to snap points that automatically sync with what’s happening on screen. Our music library includes thousands of songs in every genre, or you can upload your own, so you can choose the exact tune to suit your next video.

Beat Sync takes one of the toughest parts of video editing and makes it automatic. But if you’re the type who wants more control, fear not – you can easily move your clips around using manual adjustments to snap them to a different beat.

Bring designs to life with animation

Animations are a charming way to engage an audience, but they’re also challenging to get right. With our new Create an Animation feature, watch your ideas come to life by dragging an element across the screen to record the path you want to follow, then hit play and watch the magic happen.

You can record animations for any element, including graphics, stickers, photos, frames, and even videos. This is a stunningly easy way to animate your work, allowing you to skip the learning curve and bring professional animations to life.

Bring your copy to the world with Translate

Imagine you’ve spent several days creating an amazing social media asset for your company and you’re ready to share it with the world – except, most of the world doesn't speak your language. So much of our work these days is global, and translating text is time-consuming. We’re now closing the language gap with Translate⁠(opens in a new tab or window), a new feature that instantly converts your document or design into any of 100+ languages we’ve made available. Whether you need a design in Japanese, Spanish or Arabic, we’ve got you covered.

With the push of a button, Translate empowers you to connect with audiences around the world with the confidence your message will be heard loud and clear. Whether you’re looking to localize content, an employee sharing a business plan with a global team, or a nonprofit trying to get your campaign to a wider audience, Translate makes it easier than ever to bridge language barriers and share your content in a way that is accessible to billions of people.

Making magic in Canva

These new tools allow you to go from idea to masterpiece faster and more easily than ever before, and best of all, they’re all available across our entire Visual Worksuite. Whether it’s scaling your team’s output, making an impact in a crowded marketplace, or having the tools to let your imagination soar; our goal is to make innovative technology accessible, enjoyable, and available to absolutely everyone.

We’re incredibly excited to continue empowering millions of people to unlock their creativity and achieve their goals in this brand new era of design. We can’t wait to hear what you think as you explore all of these new features – be sure to let us know using #canvalove on your favorite social media platform.

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