Figma AI
figma.com
figma.com
The AI-powered search features seem really promising, as finding the right design file is a problem I face every day. What they showed was the ability to paste a screenshot (e.g. from production) and have it find where that design came from, or use a text search to do the same. That's something that'll make me squeal with joy if it actually works.
Filling in mock data in designs is also a big potential quality of life improvement. The domain I work in is so specific that I'm not sure it'll be of practical use to me, but I'm hopeful.
All in all, I'm glad about the parts where they are trying to target some specific pain points with AI, skeptical about the rest.
> If it doesn't work with MY design system (as opposed to curated design systems like MUI or Bootstrap or whatever) then it's useless
You hit the nail on the head. This our #1 focus for this team moving forward. If you noticed in the keynote, Dylan highlighted Chen Chen and the Google Material team, both of whom created generators for their design systems. They work, but they were hard to make as the tooling to create these isn't polished or ready yet. It's something we're actively thinking about and improving in order to make this useful for those with existing design systems.
I see it leading a lot of less experienced product programs astray.
And if it is full fidelity, how do you ensure users actually own the copyright at the end of the day?
I think with those two things, It can be a really great "first draft", to be remade by me properly.
The reality is that without domain experts (design, research, engineering, business, law) you're left trusting the AI to make the decision without a good way to check if it made the right one.
We're already seeing it with marketing copy.
You can tell me about the math, theories and laws but look around you, nobody cares about those any more.
It's true. Just a few years back, design thinking was all the rage. Nowadays, even apps from flagship companies feel all over the place. Attention to detail, unobtrusive interface, intelligent symbols, subdued color palettes, rich illustrations, all that is out the window now. Why should we need good design when we can replace it with cheaper "AI" templates?
Read design books from the 1980s versus today. They aren't the same planet.
I've found that, generally, "better search" is the biggest productivity bump I get from gen AI at the moment. That is, lots of times I don't know the keyword of what I want to find beforehand, and with things like ChatGPT I can just describe it to find out. E.g. recently I needed to update all the values in a Postgres array column of one value to another, so I just described to ChatGPT what I wanted to do. It would have taken me a lot longer to hunt through the docs to find the `array_replace` function and get usage examples.
Plus, in the "better search" use case I'm much less concerned about hallucinations as I'm really only using ChatGPT to get me started in the right direction in the first place.
However, they are headed that way to support advanced AI features. Quoting Fimga:
Two important highlights: First, all admins have control of whether their team’s content data is used for training. Second, participation in AI content training is not required to use Figma or Figma’s AI features. Learn more about our approach to training.
More time spent on user issues rather than monotonous work sounds like a win win.
I’d rather watch a YouTuber or streamer do a real project in a tool too see if and how it works in practice.
We did talk about faking it, but Dylan was heavily opposed as he felt it wouldn't be genuine.
As additional proof that it was not faked, the CEO was clearly distracted by the notifications from hundreds of people requesting access to the live file he was demoing from, which was a pretty good live demo moment.
Is anyone else running into this at their companies? I look at these tools and get excited but I’m continuously being blocked from using for work.
But the models behind these AI tools have a single-tenant core, with tenant isolation added on as a heroic effort to fake what the technology does not support by default.
As an aside, I work in accessibility and our team started using some AI and automated tools to do some A11Y testing and much of the functionality has been blocked. We were really interested in the companies mobile testing tool but now we won't be able to use that because of the network restrictions.
I've also heard complaints from Devs who said GitHub Copilot has also been blocked and they've been in discussions with the security team to try and get approved, but no luck thus far, they're not budging on allowing it yet.
So you're right, its not just one app or tool, companies are staring to block this stuff wholesale across their orgs.
I am soooo glad that I do not work for a very large corporation anymore. Man, the hurdles they create are a massive pain in the rear.
I work for a small 10-person company. I get to make the rules. And we are never hard ass about the rules. I don't think I have been this productive at any job in the past.
I understand that a 100,000 person company has different set of concerns. But I do think that an average developer at smaller company is more productive because they have to deal with a lot less BS.
> Starting today, admins can set that content data training preference directly in settings, across all plans.
> -Starter and Professional plans are opted in by default, but can opt out.
> - Organization and Enterprise plans are opted out by default.
> Two important highlights: First, all admins have control of whether their team’s content data is used for training. Second, participation in AI content training is not required to use Figma or Figma’s AI features. Learn more about our approach to training.
Blanket bans on third party AI tools don't make any sense to me. As the parent commenter said, they already have all your data, so you already have to trust them with that. Why would you trust them in those other areas but not trust their explicit statements that say that you can disable training on your data?
The only way to be sure your data stays yours is local models running on your machines.
Welcome to the future you were promised! It’s already too late.
It's an easy, safe and secure default.
This is how corporations solve these kinds of issues. As soon as you as a company are a customer instead of some random person using their AI tools, you start to actually have influence over the other company.
Nearly every SaaS tool I've seen that has AI features lets you opt out of training, as these SaaS companies know that this is a deal breaker for many of their clients.
But this is exactly the type of situation why you have a contract. Even if it is standard, this is the means by which you can enforce the AI company to not use your data.
Total security (and possibly legal) nightmare.
And yet pricing controls that people actually want? Oh 6 to 12 months maybe