Canva’s AI gambit rekindles the human cost debate
When Canva announced in April that it was cutting the headcount of its technical writing team, the decision surprised many in the industry.
The move came just months after the Australian tech giant had strongly encouraged employees to integrate generative AI tools into their daily workflows – a push that, for some, felt like a collaborative stint.
The decision, which saw 10 to 12 technical writers let go, was never framed as a cost-saving measure.
Rather, Canva described it as part of a shift in how engineering teams produce documentation, utilising AI to enable developers to write and maintain content independently.
However, for those affected and many in the sector, it signalled the start of a seismic shift.
Yet Duncan Clark, who leads Canva’s European operations and formerly headed its global partnerships, told CityAM: “It’s not about AI replacing people, it’s about rethinking how work gets done, and where humans add the value”.
“There’s always a human layer where you’re crafting and fine tuning, or editing brand nuance, localisation, etc. So if you can just get to the point where the fine tuning is done faster, that is generally a good thing”.
Clark insisted the firm remains “staunchly committed” to empowering people to work creatively, whilst admitting that the tools are now capable of more than they were even a year ago.
Canva: A global player
Canva’s growth has been considerable and it now has 230m monthly active users and a presence in 190 countries.
Its user base now includes more than 95 per cent of the Fortune 500, from DHL Express to Salesforce, which uses Canva to manage a multilingual social team. Salesforce has stated that using the platform has helped it reduce the cost per design by 66 per cent.
The education sector, too, has proven to be a fertile ground, with over 80m students and teachers across 800,000 schools globally using the platform.
But it is Canva’s aggressive pivot into AI that is garnering critique.
Its AI tools, such as Magic Design, an AI-powered video editing tool with a one-click background removal function, have now been used more than 16bn times.
“We launched a whole bunch of AI features so that you do various stuff things from a reference image or from prompt or from another design or drafted documents”, the exec told CityAM.
The firm has also made a string of acquisitions to fuel its AI and professional design options, like image-generation startup Leonardo.ai and Affinity, the British software firm behind a suite of creative tools long seen as an alternative to Adobe.
Clark describes these moves as necessary to support the full spectrum of design needs, from beginners to professionals.
But that same expansion, particularly into AI, has complicated Canva’s public image as a people-first platform.
Meanwhile, the layoffs have already prompted broader unease about AI’s impact on creative work.
Creative industry versus tech
This comes amid a stand-off between policymakers and the creative industries over the role of copyright in AI development.
This legislative deadlock has drawn sharp criticism across the creative industries.
Sir Elton John, one of over 400 signatories to a letter urging tougher safeguards, accused the government of enabling “theft” by allowing tech firms to train generative AI tools on copyrighted material without approval or remuneration.
“It’s criminal”, he told the BBC. “They’re robbing young people of their legacy and income”.
Creative industry leaders have called on Prime Minister Keir Starmer to intervene directly and ensure that regulation keeps pace with technological change.
In the meantime, many in the sector feel that the country risks undermining its global leadership in creative rights.
Yet on Canva, Clark insisted: “Canva has approached this is to is we’ve always had a very community led approach to content”.
” So content is made by a huge community of content creators, and we’ve always had a revenue share model so that when people create templates within Canva, they get money back from that.”
He explained that the AI revolution has created an opportunity for us to extend that so template creators can opt in to have their templates part of our AI training.
Canva’s growth and responsibility
Internally, the tech giant says it remains focused on localising its offering and investing in talent.
Its UK team of nearly 200 is now the base for all of Europe, while over 20m designs are created in the UK per month.
Yet, the firm building tools to “democratise design” is now facing questions on how automation affects the very workers who helped it grow.
But Clark reaffirmed Canva’s human-first strategy, repeating the now-iconic phrase: “Marketers won’t be replaced by AI, but marketers with AI”.