«Almost a copy of Apple Weather». Figma removes new AI tool after accusations of design theft

Figma Make Designs created mockups of apps in seconds using generative AI — and some of the results, as it turned out later, were too similar to Apple’s weather app.

In a post on X, Figma CEO Dylan Field eventually announced the removal of the program and took the blame, explaining that he had been strictly demanding that the team meet a deadline, which could have led to mistakes.

(1) As we shared at Config last week – as well as on our blog, our website, and many other touchpoints – the Make Design feature is not trained on Figma content, community files or app designs. In other words, the accusations around data training in this tweet are false. https://t.co/jlfmroPPhm

— Dylan Field (@zoink) July 2, 2024

Meanwhile, in other posts on the social network, Not Boring Software CEO Andy Allen showed how Figma Make Designs copies the Apple Weather design:

Figma AI looks rather heavily trained on existing apps.

This is a “weather app” using the new Make Designs feature and the results are basically Apple’s Weather app (left). Tried three times, same results. https://t.co/Ij20OpPCer pic.twitter.com/psFTV6daVD

— Andy Allen (@asallen) July 1, 2024

Jay Peters of The Verge in an interview with Figma CTO Chris Rasmussen I asked directly — Did Make Designs learn from Apple’s app design? Here’s his answer:

«We have not trained within the generative AI functions. The functions are provided by ready-made models and a special design system that we ordered, which seems to be the main problem».

Rasmussen added that the key AI models that Make Designs uses are OpenAI’s GPT-4o and Amazon’s Titan Image Generator G1. If this is true, then the question arises whether they learned from Apple’s developments.

At the same time, Figma emphasizes that Make Designs was in beta, which is «by definition, not perfect». After working on the bugs (and possibly retraining), the feature is planned to be returned.

Last week, Figma unveiled its AI training policy, under which users have until August 15 to decide whether they agree to provide their content (Starter and Professional plans are enabled by default, while Organization and Enterprise plans are disabled by default).