Australian owners Canva have combined the Affinity app they bought – together with developer Serif – in March last year, pledging to make it “free forever” and adding new optional AI design features.

In a grand launch last week, co-founders Cliff Obrecht, Melanie Perkins and Cameron Adams announced the “world-first” AI design model, seen as a step nearer to its stock exchange listing.

Obrecht says the design model is unique in applying AI specifically to design challenges, using reasoning trained on design systems, layouts, brand guidelines and visual workflows.

Launch of the Creative Operating System introduces significant upgrades across Canva’s Visual Suite, including Video 2.0, a reimagined video editor with which users can generate polished video content from a single prompt – and Email Design, which allows creation, customisation and export of fully branded marketing emails as HTML files without coding.

The company also launched Canva Grow, an end-to-end marketing platform, bringing creation, publishing and performance tracking together in one place.

Canva users have been using AI tools since the 2023 launch of Magic Studio, the time savings helping convert free users to paid subscribers.

The move to make the Affinity design tool suite “free forever” is seen as a challenge to Adobe’s InDesign and Creative Suite, for which users pay a monthly fee. Obrecht said “us really disrupting the professional design market” meant professional designers could also share Canva’s mission to empower the world to design.

US-based GXpress columnist Kevin Slimp says he won’t be in a hurry “to upend his entire design process to save a few dollars each month”. He’d also had reliability issues with Affinity's photo-editing app, missing the colour settings, control of dot gain, and ink colours he relied on from (Adobe) Photoshop.

Slimp says an ‘introduction to Affinity Publisher’ webinar drew “one of the biggest crowds I've ever had” with more than 400 newspaper professionals, and to give it time. His full comments are linked here, and a full review is promised “after the holidays”.

•Watcch last Thursday’s full Canva presentation here