Canva Acquires Leonardo AI to Enhance Image Generation Abilities

Canva, a popular online design application, has revealed its plans to acquire Leonardo AI, an image generator and AI creative platform. The integration of Leonardo's technology, particularly its Phoenix foundational model, into Canva's AI image and video generator, Magic Media, is on the horizon. Despite this merger, Leonardo will maintain its independence and continue enhancing its existing products. Users of Canva can rest assured that their content will not be shared with Leonardo unless they explicitly opt in.

Co-founder and chief product officer of Canva, Cameron Adams, expressed excitement about the collaboration with Leonardo.AI, foreseeing a surge of creativity and design in the generative AI field. The synergy between the two entities is expected to result in innovative solutions that cater to the evolving needs of users.

Canva, boasting over 170 million global users, has been actively incorporating AI tools into its platform over the past year. This strategic move empowers users to effortlessly create impactful visuals and images for their projects. Notably, Canva was among the first plugins compatible with ChatGPT, allowing users to generate images directly within the chatbot interface.

On the other hand, Leonardo AI, an Australian startup renowned for its development of cutting-edge foundation models, such as the Phoenix model, specializes in generating high-quality images and videos from text inputs. The Phoenix model excels in expedited content generation, outperforming industry competitors like Stable Diffusion. This model intricately adheres to user-specified prompts, yielding images that faithfully reflect the provided text instructions, especially for intricate visual content creation.

Phoenix's remarkable capability to embed clear and precise text within images sets it apart from existing models, which often struggle with this aspect. Eventually, this model will seamlessly integrate into Canva's suite of products and services, enabling users to elevate their content creation process with newly generated images.

Emphasizing their commitment to fostering innovation and rapid growth, Leonardo anticipates significant strides forward due to Canva's support. The infusion of resources from Canva will enable Leonardo to bolster its research capacity, expand its global research team, and swiftly tackle a multitude of challenges.

With this acquisition marking Canva's second in 2021, following its acquisition of creative design platform Affinity in March, the industry anticipates exciting developments in the intersection of design and artificial intelligence. By joining forces, Canva and Leonardo AI are primed to drive the boundaries of creativity, empowering users globally to craft visually stunning and engaging content seamlessly.