AI slop has a signature style. At a glance, it’s easy to clock the hallmarks of an AI-generated poster: Crowded blocks of cliché-ridden text. Cutesy characters straight from the uncanny valley. Inexplicably explosion-filled backgrounds.
But Canva might have the solution to graphic design’s AI crisis. The platform’s newest feature reimagines AI design from the ground up, and it’s causing a stir on social media.
Canva Brush is a vision-language model built for design. Rather than taking a user’s prompt and spitting out a fully formed graphic, Brush takes designs step by step the way a human would, thanks to training on real design processes.
Brush is also built to combat one of the most frustrating aspects of AI image-generation. Often, asking for a single edit has an unintended domino effect, messing with unrelated aspects of a graphic that the user didn’t want to change at all. By keeping track of its interconnected decisions, Brush can isolate design aspects to make small changes. Its outputs are also fully editable for users who want to add a truly human touch.
A promo video for Brush shows the tool being used to create mock-ups for an ice cream brand, then generate staged product mock-ups and apply the same branding to different flavors (including a selection of Halloween pun-based cartons just in time for spooky season). The video has amassed more than 2.2 million views on X.
According to Canva, Brush runs up to 69% faster than its previous design agent, with each editing task costing 46% less.
Brush comes a week after the launch of Canva Craft, the platform’s first image-generation model, which comes second in quality only to OpenAI’s image models as ranked by DesignArena. Both Craft and Brush are the product of Canva’s 160-person AI lab, Canva Research.
In a blog post announcing Brush, Canva wrote that it’s already working on expanded features for the model, including the use of brand kits and the ability to reference attachments.
“As we gear up to unveil the next generation of Canva AI, we’re focused on giving you more creative control, making it easier to explore ideas, experiment with different directions and refine every detail until it’s just right,” reads the post. “Brush is a key part of making that possible.”
As of its October 29 launch, Brush is only available to Canva Pro subscribers, though expanded availability is planned for the near future.
Canva’s announcement has garnered hundreds on responses on social media. In one viral post (a paid partnership with Canva), a user wrote that they “didn’t expect Canva of all companies to spearhead the crusade against graphic design slop,” sharing a video from creator Tiffany Dougherty of a state fair riddled with AI-generated posters, menus, and banners—all examples of the notorious AI design aesthetic Canva is aiming to avoid.
Other users commented on how Brush will hopefully come in handy with their own design processes. “As someone who lives in design tools, editing is the most time-consuming,” one commenter wrote. “Nice to see a model focused on the part where most of my hours are spent.”