Canva adds a new generative AI platform to its growing creative empire

Canva has announced plans to acquire Leonardo.ai, an Australian generative AI content and research startup, as part of its goal to build a “world-class AI visual toolset.” While financial terms were not disclosed, the deal will allow Canva to gain access to Leonardo.ai’s lineup of customizable text-to-image and text-to-video generators.

Lately, Canva has been making efforts to diversify its platform with more office suite-like tools, but the visual design and communications platform remains one of the biggest competitors to Adobe’s line of creative software products. Where the Affinity acquisition could help Canva compete with Adobe software like Illustrator, Photoshop and InDesign, Leonardo.ai could similarly be positioned as an alternative to Adobe’s Firefly generative AI models.

Leonardo.ai said TechCrunch that its models are trained using “licensed, synthetic, and publicly available/open source data,” which is vaguer than Adobe’s training disclosure for Firefly. Despite this, Adobe suffered backlash over a recent policy update that forced it to explicitly state that user data would not be used to train the company’s generative AI models. Canva has an opportunity to position itself as a growing alternative, but it needs to tread carefully to avoid any Adobe-like scrutiny from creators who have similar reservations about generative AI.