Canva’s New AI Design Tools Aim to Help You Create and Edit Like a Pro

Canva is aiming to empower customers with the ability to write, edit and design content under one umbrella. The company announced the launch of Magic Studio on Wednesday, a package of design tools powered by artificial intelligence. The platform includes 10 different functions that allow you to use prompts to generate images, text, animations and videos, or edit and format your creation in a few steps.

Some tools rolled out on the Canva app within the past year, such as Magic Write, Magic Edit, Magic Eraser and Magic Design, but now they’re all housed together in the Magic Studio. Here’s a look at which features you can access and how they can help streamline — or even automate — your projects. 

• Magic Design: Quickly make videos, presentations and other media by inputting your idea and choosing color palettes and other customizable elements. 
• Magic Grab: Pick any part of your photo to resize, edit or move it. 
• Magic Switch: Change whiteboards and presentations into documents, or translate your content. This feature helps you convert various forms of media into new formats. 
• Magic Expand: Make vertical photos horizontal, enlarge images or fix framing. 
• Magic Morph: Input a prompt to apply special effects to any image or text you create, adding hues, patterns, textures or other details. 
• Magic Edit: Remix your images with Canva’s brush and AI inputs to edit and replace graphics. Add a piece of clothing, turn a book into a puppy, attach a cupcake to a skyscraper and much more.
• Magic Media: Make videos from text or images, or turn text into photos. “Use the AI text-to-video generator by entering a prompt,” Canva says, “and watch your words and phrases transform into amazing videos.” You can also flip an image into a video.
• Magic Write: Helps you write (or rewrite) captions, letters, paragraphs or other pieces of text with an assist from OpenAI prompts. For example, you can type “write a job description” and Magic Write will generate the words. You can even opt to have your copy written in a brand’s tone. 
• Magic Animate: Add lively visuals to your design — including fonts — with the animation tool.
• Magic Eraser: Polish up your images by removing unwanted elements with the eraser — including photobombs. 

Generative AI technology is being integrated into graphic design apps used by professionals and nonexperts alike. Within Adobe’s ecosystem, Firefly is a new AI-powered set of features that can be used to create and edit images or to add effects to text. You can get the Firefly app or check out how to use it in Photoshop or Illustrator. Additionally, Canva was not the first to roll out an eraser tool, as Google introduced its Magic Eraser in 2021 for photos on Pixel phones.

Canva customers can access the AI app marketplace with a freemium account, but there are limitations on which Magic Studio apps are available. Paid subscribers who have Canva Pro and Canva for Teams have unlimited access to Magic Studio features. Free trials are available.  

Editors’ note: CNET is using an AI engine to help create some stories. For more, see this post.