Figma has temporarily disabled its new artificial intelligence-based design tool, Make Design, after it “drew” a copy of Apple’s weather app interface, TechCrunch reports.
The decision was made after Andy Allen, CEO and co-founder of Not Boring Software, shared images on X showing that Make Design generated several app designs that were almost identical to Apple’s standard iOS weather when asked to create a “weather app.”
Make Design, integrated into Figma software, aims to generate user interface (UI) mockups and components based on text prompts. This feature was advertised as a tool for developers to quickly create and explore design ideas, helping them find solutions faster.
At Figma’s Config conference last week, the company explained that Make Design was not trained based on Figma content, community files, or third-party app designs. But Allen’s revelation that Figma is essentially copying other apps has raised concerns among the design community.
“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 warned other X users.
In response to Allen’s accusations, Figma CEO and co-founder Dylan Field explained that Make Design uses off-the-shelf large language models combined with “systems that we’ve commissioned to use those models.” According to him, the problem with this approach is that the variability is too low.
Field acknowledged that in the rush to launch new AI features to keep the company competitive, the quality assurance (QA) process had been overlooked. He also announced that Figma will temporarily disable Make Design until the team is confident that its output does not copy existing interfaces and designs. The feature will remain disabled until a thorough quality check of the underlying design system is completed.
Apple has not commented on the issue, and Figma cites Field’s tweets as its official statement on the matter.
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