Figma stops its AI design tool that seemed to be ripping off Apple's Weather app

Figma CEO Dylan Field says the company will temporarily disable its "Make Design" artificial intelligence feature, which is expected to rip off the design of Apple's own weather app. The problem was first discovered by Andy Allen, founder of NotBoring Software, which makes a suite of applications that includes a popular weather app and other utilities. Testing Figma's tool, he discovered that when used as a design aid, it repeatedly copied Apple's Weather app.

Allen accused Figma at X (formerly Twitter) of training its tool "heavily" on existing apps, a charge Field has now denied. The Make Design feature is available in Figma's software and will generate UI (user interface) layouts and components from text prompts. "Just describe what you need and the feature will give you a first draft," is how the company explained it when the feature was launched. The idea, Figma says, is that developers can use the feature to help express their ideas quickly, start exploring different design directions, and then arrive at solutions more quickly.

Field X noted in a response that the feature was introduced at the Figma Config conference last week, where the company explained that it has no training on Figma content, community documentation, or app design. "In other words, the data training claims in this tweet are false," he said.

But in the rush to introduce new AI features to stay competitive, the quality assurance work associated with new features seems to have been overlooked. For example, Make Design will eliminate the jobs Allen created by bringing digital design to the mass market, while others argue that AI will only help eliminate much of the repetitive design work, allowing more interesting ideas to emerge. Allen found that Figma essentially plagiarized other applications, causing more concern in the design community. Allen warned others about it

Field responded that Make Design uses large, off-the-shelf language models along with "systems that we order to use for those models." The problem with this approach, he said, is that the variability is too low. Field wrote about me not pushing for a better quality assurance process for this job.

Apple could not immediately be reached for comment. Figma stated that the field tweet is a statement of this case.

The field said the figs would temporarily disable the "Production Design" feature until the team was convinced that it can "stand behind it." This feature will be disabled on Tuesday and until the Figma completes all the quality of the functioning system quality insurance, the function will not be opened.