On Friday, Anthropic announced Cloud Design, a new tool that lets users create sophisticated visuals like slide decks, app prototypes and one-pager marketing using simple text prompts. The tool is powered by Cloud Opus 4.7 and is gradually becoming available today as a research preview for Cloud Pro, Max, Team, and Enterprise customers.
It works by letting users convey what they want in simple language signs. They can also upload codebases and design files, allowing the cloud to create a design system that automatically applies the team’s colors, typography, and other design components to projects.
The cloud then creates an initial version of the design, which users can refine through interaction, inline comments, direct editing, or custom sliders built by the cloud.
Projects can be exported as PDF, PowerPoint or Canva. Once complete, the design can also be packaged for cloud code to build into working projects.
Anthropic said the tool has already been used to create realistic prototypes, pitch decks and marketing materials. The company is pitching it as a way for experienced designers to explore ideas more quickly, while also giving founders and product managers without a design background a way to bring their ideas to life.
“Cloud design gives designers the opportunity to explore broadly and gives everyone else a way to create visual work,” the company said in a press release.
Anthropic is also emphasizing that this tool can be used to complement other products rather than completely replace them.
“We’re excited to further our collaboration with Cloud, making it seamless for people to bring ideas and drafts from Cloud Design to Canva, where they’ll instantly be ready to refine, share, and publish fully editable and collaborative designs,” Canva’s CEO said in Anthropic’s press release.
It should be noted that LLMs have been notoriously unreliable when it comes to generating visual elements. Yes, image generators can be impressive at first glance, but when a user starts trying to edit individual elements, things can quickly fall apart. We will have to wait and see how well the cloud design serves its stated purpose.
Still, Wall Street sees it as competition for the design industry.
Figma’s stock fell nearly 7% on Friday after the announcement. The company is considered a major player in UI and UX design for websites and apps, with an estimated 80% to 90% market share.
The timing is remarkable. Just two months ago, Figma launched a feature called Code to Canvas, which lets users convert code generated by tools like Cloud Code into editable designs inside Figma.
Adding to the tension, Anthropic Chief Product Officer Mike Krieger had resigned from Figma’s board just days earlier amid speculation that the company was preparing to launch a design tool.
Figma did not immediately respond to Gizmodo’s request for comment.
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