Instead of a Threat, Canva Sees AI as a Tailwind, Says Co-Founder Cameron Adams
Among all the industries where the rise of generative artificial intelligence (Gen AI) has left a visible impact, graphic designing has likely witnessed the most transformative change. With computer vision and image generation capabilities of AI systems, designing and editing visual content, logos, and high-resolution artwork is easier and more accessible to people, even without the technical know-how. This also created a challenge for enterprises that offer tools and solutions around the digital image creation process, such as Adobe, Pixlr, and Canva.
For the end user, AI image generation resulted in the ability to create designs with just a single text prompt. This resulted in a simple but important question — why continue to use complex designing tools if AI can do it for you? The answer, or perhaps the lack thereof, has resulted in almost all of the major design companies turning to AI and finding a way to integrate it into their products.
But is this strategy sustainable, or is it just another way to delay the inevitable? Gadgets 360 spoke with Cameron Adams, Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer at Canva to better understand the intricacies of the design world, how the companies look at AI, and what is the larger vision behind it.
Interestingly, Canva is perhaps one of the best case studies into the matter. Founded in 2013, the Sydney-based graphic designing platform has recently integrated a wide range of AI tools and launched a major enterprise-focused suite. The move breaks an age-long tradition of remaining community-driven space for casual designers, college students, social media influencers, and independent marketers.
For a community-focused product such as Canva, this pivot was more complicated than a typical tech company. To understand why, we will need to take a step back and look at its journey so far.
Canva’s New Enterprise-Focused Approach
Ever since its inception, Canva aimed to solve a unique problem for people. Many wanted to create designs and artwork but lacked the knowledge of advanced tools such as Adobe Photoshop. To solve this problem, the company launched a platform where users could design with easy-to-use tools and visual interfaces. The product was not aimed at those who were trying to create detailed vectors or art with complex elements but at people who wanted to create birthday invitations, office presentations, pamphlets, marketing designs, or social media posts.
This differentiation and user-focused approach of Canva led to the building of a strong community and consistent growth. According to the company, it took eight years since its inception to reach 100 million users. However, the next 70 million came in just three years (170 million users in 2024).
Cameron Adams, Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer at Canva
Photo Credit: Canva
However, 2024 was also the year when the community-focused company made the major decision to become more enterprise-centric with its new suite of offerings for brands and large enterprises. While this may appear as a strange pivot, Adams believes this was a natural progression for the company.
“When we started Canva, it was focused a lot on social media and marketing. We grew the product over the next 10 years into presentations, videos, websites, and everything you need to communicate visually. What we saw as we did that is that Canva started moving from its very strong base in small to medium businesses and individuals to those people taking it to their workplace and using it there,” said Adams.
This transition — of the platform moving out of college dorms and marketers’ realm to corporate structures — arrived shortly before the COVID-19 pandemic struck. The Canva Co-Founder explained that this resulted in professionals requiring newer ways and tools to communicate and collaborate with others. This is where the popularity of Canva grew in the enterprise circles.
“We saw an exponential rise in people using Canva. We now have 95 percent of the Fortune 500 that use Canva. Enterprise has really kicked off for us, and the event that we had earlier this year, Canva Create 2024, was focused around that,” he added.
Deep Dive Into Canva’s AI Integration
Canva did not only revamp its platform this year but also added a plethora of AI features. These range from a text-to-image generator, a presentation generator, an AI-powered photo editor, and more. While the company has talked a lot about its AI offerings, not as much has been talked about their technical details.
During the conversation, we asked Adams about the large language models (LLMs) Canva is using to power the AI tools. He explained that there are three pillars to the features offered to individuals and enterprises. The first is the in-house foundation. With more than 100 engineers, the company has built a suite of machine learning (ML) tools which train visual content created by Canva’s design team.
The second pillar involves partnering with leading AI firms to use their technologies to power the AI features. “OpenAI is an example of that. We use their LLM to drive a lot of the text work that we do. So, anywhere you can add text, change text style, summarise, or expand it, it is done through OpenAI’s GPT service,” Adam explained.
Canva has partnered with Google and uses its LLM for its video product. Adam says the main usage of the AI model is for transition effects between video content. The final pillar is the company’s ecosystem.
Last year, it launched a Canva developer platform and has so far released more than 100 apps in the Canva app marketplace. Adams says the company has focused on building a relationship with the app developers and providing them a platform to bring new AI apps that users can benefit from.
Focus on Data Security
With enterprise clients coming in, harsher scrutiny will also fall on the company’s data security and privacy measures. With a platform like Canva, it works in two different ways. The first is to protect the user’s data from bad actors. This also includes not letting the data be used for AI training without consent.
The second is protecting the users from lawsuits over plagiarism or copyright infringement when they publish or commercialise something generated using AI. For the latter, Adam says the company has built a tool called Canva Shield, which provides indemnification for select enterprise clients for all AI outputs at no extra cost. It also adds new privacy settings for creators to protect their assets.
For the former, Adams says the company has taken multiple measures to ensure user data safety is preserved. “We give control to every single Canva user over the data and how it gets used with AI. You can turn it on and off whenever you like. Giving people that control and transparency is really important to us because we want people to be fully in control of what they’re doing,” he added.
The Problem of Deepfakes
AI-generated visual content has also raised concerns about deepfakes. Deepfakes are synthetically created media that mimic real people, places, or events intending to spread fake information. While Canva may not intend that use case of its product, that might as well be a scary side-effect of using AI. So, is the company taking any steps to highlight the content generated using AI?
“We want the transparency of AI-generated content to be very clear to people. We use metadata inside all of our AI-generated content, which lets people know how it is created. We are also constantly looking at new technologies and standards as they come out. We are very keen for all of the industry to kind of centralise on a proven methodology or technology for marking up AI-generated content,” Adams answered.
Can AI Replace Canva?
In a way, Canva democratised design after its launch with its user-friendly tools. However, today, AI has further lowered the barrier to entry and made image creation and editing even more accessible. The question that arises here is whether AI tools and platforms can eat up Canva’s market share as it once did with complex editing and designing tools.
Adam said, “To be honest, no. We very much see AI as a tailwind for us. Our mission for the last 12 years, and probably for the next 12 years and forever more, is to empower the world to design. When we started, the latest technology was the cloud, mobile, and JavaScript in a browser. So that’s what we used to create the product.”
“Twelve years later, AI is now an incredibly powerful technology that you can use in conjunction with all the other pieces of technology. And it allows us to further our mission. We can empower more people to create with AI in a faster fashion, and they can get high-quality content out of it.”
The Balancing Act
Canva’s enterprise focus opens up new streams of revenue for the company, but it also comes at a big challenge. Visual designs are often dictated by their cultural leanings. If you look at the storefronts in Japan or New York and compare them with Mumbai or Delhi, you will notice a distinct difference in the way art conveys a message.
The company solved this problem for the individual users with the help of Canva Creators. These were the registered designers on the platform who added templates, icons, and more. They could also earn if their creations were used by other paid users. However, this system does not work when catering to brands. Brands prefer more control over the design language and likely would not resort to third-party artists.
This would mean Canva would have to take ownership of not only offering enough creative templates in its library but also the right tools to provide businesses of different scales in different markets. In the worst-case scenario, this can slow down the innovation cycle and act on user feedback, something Canva has been known for.
Adams is not unfamiliar with this challenge. He said, “Yeah, that’s definitely a fear that we’re very proactively taking on. We want to maintain our pace of innovation and make sure that we are releasing continuously features that people want and that improve their efficiency and the quality of their designs. Even though we are catering more to an enterprise audience in the last two years, we haven’t slowed down.”
Explaining this further, Adams highlighted that despite enterprise being a new space for the company, being a part of active discussions with the enterprise customers and listening to their needs has helped them develop the right product for them.
“Our Canva Enterprise package was also developed by seeing how people use Canva inside large teams. Maybe they’re not people who directly use the product, but they’re people who administer the product, who administer it through IT, or they’re part of the brand team and they’re working with the brand that’s in Canva. There are lots of different new stakeholders that we talk to, listen to, get their feature requests from and roll those into the Canva Enterprise package,” Adams added.