THE CRUNCH
Canva has launched Canva Craft, its first AI image generation model, putting it in direct competition with image generators from OpenAI, Microsoft and Google. Craft uses a two-stage architecture that plans a design before generating the image, which Canva says delivers greater precision, consistency and control. It is available now to all users globally via the Dream Lab option in Canva's left-hand menu.
The model can produce images at up to 2K resolution in more than 30 aspect ratios, and is intended for social media posts, marketing content, realistic scenes, digital art and environmental imagery. According to Canva, the two-stage approach helps it handle complex images that need legible text and precise object placement.
Craft was trained on millions of human-made templates from Canva's own content library, spanning social posts, presentations, infographics and menus. On Design Arena, a crowdsourced leaderboard for AI image models, Canva says Craft currently ranks fourth, behind three OpenAI models: GPT-Image-2.5 Sunburst, GPT-Image-2.5 Flare and GPT-Image-2.
The launch builds on Canva's earlier AI push, including prompt-based editing introduced in April and layers for AI-generated images that let users edit part of an image while leaving the rest untouched. Canva says Craft includes input and output moderation, privacy and safety controls, and reporting tools, and it plans to let AI agents connect through the open Model Context Protocol, with faster Craft-fast and Craft-ultrafast variants to come.