Canva launches its own AI model that plans the image before drawing it

Design tool Canva has launched Craft, the company's first in-house image-generating foundation model. It is a large AI model that other features can be built on top of. According to Canva, the company's research division, Canva Research, built and trained it from scratch.

Craft is available to all Canva users worldwide through Dream Lab, which opens from the panel at the bottom left in Canva. Developers can use the model through Canva's public API.

Plans first, draws afterward

Craft works in two steps. First, a planning model maps out elements, placement, proportions, visual hierarchy and text. Then a separate renderer creates the image itself. According to Canva, this produces legible text, precise placement and the ability to make targeted edits without rebuilding the whole image.

The model produces images at up to 2K resolution, with more than 30 preset formats or a custom format of your choosing. Users can write their prompts in any language, and the model can generate text in 55 languages. Canva says it is built for realistic scenes, text-heavy layouts, illustrations and portraits, among other things.

Canva also says that a technique for delineating elements helps the Magic Layers feature turn generated images into elements that can be edited individually.

Trained on templates and evaluated by designers

Training emphasized design over photography. Canva used millions of human-made templates such as posters, presentations, infographics and menus. Afterward, the model was fine-tuned with input from Canva's professional designers.

Designers and dozens of researchers evaluated more than 25,000 image pairs against leading models. The designers' judgment carried the most weight when it diverged from automated measurements.

Rankings are Canva's own figures

According to Canva, Craft debuted in fourth place on the DesignArena leaderboard. In the People & Portraits category it ranks first among 87 models, and in Landscapes & Nature it ranks first among 85. The rankings are Canva's own figures and have not been independently confirmed.

Canva says Craft is an order of magnitude faster than the first internal version. This is partly because the model has been pruned so that it needs far fewer computation steps.

What's coming

Canva is planning the variants Craft-fast and Craft-ultrafast, which are meant to deliver high quality at a fraction of the price of leading models. Support for Canva MCP is also on the way, so AI assistants can create design-ready images as part of larger tasks. Advanced editing features and reference images are planned for later. No timing or pricing has been announced for the API.

Craft is covered by Canva Shield, which includes input and output checks, among other things.