Figma disables its recently launched generative AI app design tool Make Design, after a user showed it copied Apple's Weather when asked to design a weather app
The design tool Figma has disabled a newly launched AI-powered app design tool … Nehal Malik / iPhone in Canada Blog : AI Design Tool Axes Feature that Cloned Apple's Weather App John Gruber / Daring Fireball : Figma AI Is a Rip-Off Engine Nick Heer / Pixel Envy : Figma Disables A.I. Design Tool After It Copied Apple's Weather App Alex Ivanovs / Stack Diary : Figma to temporarily disable ‘Make Design’ AI feature amid plagiarism concerns Threads: Andy Allen / @asallen : This is a “weather app” using the new Make Designs feature in Figma AI and the results are nearly identical to Apple's Weather app (left). Tried three times, same results. Hmm... 🤔 Mastodon: Oliver Reichenstein / @reichenstein@mastodon.social : It's almost funny how Figma didn't see this coming after the evenly predictable Adobe fuckup. https://techcrunch.com/... next: Fender adding AI to their guitars so everyone can be like Prince without learning to play the guitar. With an optional sign out for those who don't want to feed the beast with their own data. Steve Streza / @stevestreza@indieweb.social : Why would Figma pull it? Ripping off people's work and doing plagiarism laundering is what generative AI is for. And Apple wrongly but confidently says that if something exists online, it's fair game to steal, so it's only fair to steal liberally from Apple. … Dare Obasanjo / @carnage4life@mas.to : Figma has disabled its recently launched “Make Design” feature which uses AI to design an app after it was discovered that asking it to make a weather app creates one that looks remarkably like the Apple Weather app. — Another instance of AI being trained on data then competing with creators. … @mttaggart@infosec.town : Oh I see, so some plagiarism is bad, but other plagiarism is fine. — Based on...the size of the IP owners' legal department? — www.404media.co/figma-disables-ai-app- design-tool-after-it-copied-apples- weather-app/ X: Andy Allen / @asallen : 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. [image] Dylan Field / @zoink : (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. Dylan Field / @zoink : (4) I have asked our team to temporarily disable the Make Design feature until we are confident we can stand behind its output. The feature will be disabled when our US based team wakes up in a few hours, and we will re-enable it when we have completed a full QA pass on the Andy Allen / @asallen : Figma AI designs a “not boring weather app” [video] Kris Rasmussen / @kris_rasmussen : @asallen Thank you for surfacing this. As we shared when we launched Figma AI last week, there was no training as part of this feature or any of our generative features. We are looking into what extent the similarities are a function of the third party models we are using vs. the design Dylan Field / @zoink : (3) Within hours of seeing this tweet, we identified the issue, which was related to the underlying design systems that were created. Ultimately it is my fault for not insisting on a better QA process for this work and pushing our team hard to hit a deadline for Config. Sebastiaan de With / @sdw : It just blows my mind how much companies keep self-owning because they think they risk anything being ‘too slow’ in adopting AI. All the fast AI implementations have been bad. Google answers. MS Recall. This Figma AI thing. Take your time to do it right the first time. Ravi Bhandia / @ravi_bhandia : Interesting thread on another failed llm feature launch, this time it's figma. https://x.com/... Main takeaway for me: QA and good evals are so important. It's sometimes a difficult decision to ship early even when you don't have a ton of confidence in the feature vs. Sky Hartman / @realskyhartman : Another reason we've decided to turn off all AI features in @figma @RocketCompanies. A ton of great updates came out of Config, but Figma needs to allow for more granularity with its AI permissions. Get Started needs to be able to be turned off. Emanuel Maiberg / @emanuelmaiberg : AI tool rushed to launch✅ Immediately clearly copies someone's work✅ Mild panic, AI tool shut down✅ https://www.404media.co/... Arvid / @designerarvid : @asallen the AI, being a machine of inferences — of averages, means, and medians — will likely create average results. https://www.arvidastrom.com/ ... Adam Whitcroft / @adamwhitcroft : Not trained on Figma content... yet. If they truly respected those using their design tool, training - when it launches - should be opt in. Amy Hoy / @amyhoy : using generative anything will always be a millstone around your neck. if you can generate it, any other jackass can too — it's the opposite of a competitive advantage (and they'll both probably infringe). @martymadrid : What I find hilarious about the design community is that they all want to inspire each other, but only when it's done manually. What we forget is that every time we enter an awards contest, post on Dribbble, or just publish our work publicly ... it's instantly training data for Andrew Hart / @andrewhartar : CEO of Figma is apologetic about scraping data, but just like all the others (OpenAI, Google, Apple) uses evasive language to downplay the issue. “we use publicly available data” is the new “we scraped the internet”. “we use off-the-shelf LLMs” == not our fault! Alex Guichet / @alexguichet : Andy is the exact right person to make this thread, as the creator of extremely original and imaginative apps in quite tired product categories Figma is responding by saying there was no *training*, but it's clear the system is built to produce this exact style of output. You Trace Cohen / @trace_cohen : 1) masterclass in CEO led comms 2) admitted pushed product team to conf deadline to ship good but not perfect product 3) off shelf LLMs will produce good stuff 4) users expect Ai to create something new and magical - we still have a lot of work to do before that. Marcin Krzyzanowski / @krzyzanowskim : How's building designers community around Figma AI going on? now when they realized they are the product and given for free. Sebastiaan de With / @sdw : Design deserves better than Figma AI. Figma was the latest company to mishandle AI and design — foreshadowing the loss of a vast array of design jobs. We should demand better from our tools and industry. https://sdw.space/... [image] Dare Obasanjo / @carnage4life : Figma has disabled its recently launched “Make Design” feature which uses AI to design an app after it was discovered that asking it to make a weather app creates one that looks remarkably like the Apple Weather app. [image] Dare Obasanjo / @carnage4life : Another instance of AI being trained on copyrighted content then competing with creators. https://www.404media.co/... Dylan Field / @zoink : (2) How does Make Design work? As we have explained publicly, the feature uses off-the-shelf LLMs, combined with design systems we commissioned to be used by these models. The problem with this approach — which I outlined in my keynote last week — is that variability is too low. Dylan Field / @zoink : (5) As I discussed at Config, we believe that craft is your competitive advantage and it's more important than ever to create unique designs. We live in a world where any off the shelf LLM can help you go from prompt to software in one shot. Designers will need new tools to Dylan Field / @zoink : (6) I hate missing the mark, especially on something that I believe is so fundamentally important to the future of design. More soon. LinkedIn: Jürgen Geuter : So Figma added a plagiarism machine to its offering (AI Designer). Which for obvious reasons must have been trained on existing apps. … Forums: Hacker News : Figma disables AI app design tool after it copied Apple's weather app Hacker News : Figma AI is a rip-off engine r/FigmaDesign : Figma disables AI app design tool Beehaw : Figma Disables AI App Design Tool After It Copied Apple's Weather App Msmash / Slashdot : Figma Disables AI Design Tool That Copied Apple Weather App
Context & Ripple Effects
Figma had just positioned generative tools as part of a broader product update, with the new capabilities free during beta before a planned paid launch. The rapid pause puts a quality-control problem inside a feature central to that AI product expansion.
Figma’s CTO said the output issue stemmed from a commissioned design system used alongside off-the-shelf models, rather than training on Figma community content or app designs. That narrows the immediate failure point but makes the company’s promised full QA review of Make Design consequential for its return.
First-order effects
- Make Design is unavailable while Figma completes a QA pass, interrupting access for beta users and delaying the feature’s path toward launch.
- Figma must review and revise the commissioned design-system layer that produced an interface closely resembling Apple’s Weather app, while addressing trust in the feature’s outputs.
Second-order effects
- The incident raises the bar for pre-release similarity testing in AI design tools: vendors cannot treat model provenance alone as sufficient if templates or design systems can yield recognizable product interfaces.
- Design teams evaluating generative UI features may require more human review before using outputs in product work, reducing the time-saving value such tools are intended to provide.
Third-order effects
- As AI design generation becomes commercial software rather than an experimental add-on, providers will increasingly compete on safeguards, provenance controls, and output review—not only on how quickly they generate screens.
- If lookalike outputs recur across the sector, copyright and attribution concerns already surrounding image-generation systems could extend more directly to interface-generation workflows.
The trend: Generative design tools are moving toward production use, making output provenance and similarity controls a core product requirement rather than a back-office compliance issue.