Figma adds an AI assistant to its collaborative canvas

Key points

• Over the last few months, Figma has struck partnerships with OpenAI and Anthropic to bake in support for AI CLI tools like Claude Code and Codex to allow users to use these coding environments alongside its design software.
• The company is now baking in its own take on AI smarts via a new AI agent that operates within its collaborative canvas.
• Figma says users can employ natural language text prompts to direct its new AI agent to generate new designs, edit existing ones, or automate tasks such as generating iterations of existing designs.
• Users can even fire up multiple agents that can do various tasks simultaneously.
• The company claims the AI assistant understands design contexts and elements since it runs on AI models that are fine-tuned for design use.