Figma CEO Dylan Field has announced that the company will temporarily disable its “Make Design” AI feature following allegations that it was mimicking the design of Apple’s Weather app. The issue was first identified by Andy Allen, founder of NotBoring Software, a company known for its suite of apps, including a popular, customizable Weather app. Allen discovered that Figma’s tool consistently reproduced Apple’s Weather app when used as a design aid.
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Allen took to X (formerly Twitter) to accuse Figma of “heavily” training its AI on existing apps—a claim that Field has denied.
AI Design Feature
Figma recently launched a feature called Make Design, which generates UI layouts and components from text prompts. “Just describe what you need, and the feature will provide you with a first draft,” the company explained at its release. The intention was to help developers quickly capture their ideas, explore various design directions, and reach solutions faster.
Unveiled at Figma’s Config conference last week, the company clarified that the Make Design feature was not trained on Figma content, community files, or app designs. “In other words, the accusations around data training in this tweet are false,” noted Field in his response on X.
However, the rapid rollout of new AI features to stay competitive seems to have overlooked essential quality assurance processes.
Reflecting concerns from other sectors, some designers quickly voiced fears that Figma’s AI tools, such as Make Design, could threaten jobs by democratizing digital design. In contrast, others argued that AI would streamline tedious tasks, enabling more creative and innovative ideas to flourish.
Allen’s discovery that Figma appeared to be copying other apps has raised significant concern within the design community.
“Just a heads-up to any designers using the new Make Designs feature: you may want to thoroughly check existing apps or heavily modify the results to avoid unknowingly landing in legal trouble,” Allen warned others on X.
Field responded by clarifying that Make Designs uses off-the-shelf large language models, combined with “systems we commissioned for use by these models.” He acknowledged that the problem with this approach is the lack of sufficient variability.
“Within hours of seeing [Allen’s] tweet, we identified the issue, which was related to the underlying design systems that were created,” Field wrote on X. “Ultimately, it is my fault for not insisting on a better QA process for this work and pushing our team hard to hit a deadline for Config.”
Apple was not immediately available for comment. Figma pointed to Field’s tweets as its statement on the matter.
Field stated that Figma will temporarily disable the Make Design feature until the team is confident in its quality. The feature will be disabled as of Tuesday and will not be re-enabled until Figma completes a full QA review of the feature’s underlying design system.
More Sources : TechCrunch
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