Canva said on Thursday that it has launched Canva Craft, its first image model built from scratch by its in-house lab, Canva Research. Craft makes images up to 2K resolution in more than 30 aspect ratios. Canva says one model first writes a plan of the layout, including object placement and any text, and a second model then draws the image. Canva trained it on millions of human-made templates from its library. It is open now to all Canva users through Dream Lab, and to developers through a public API. Canva says it ranks fourth on DesignArena, a crowdsourced leaderboard. The Verge reported that three OpenAI models rank above it.
Canva said two faster versions, Craft-fast and Craft-ultrafast, are coming and will cost less than leading models. It gave no dates and no prices. It also lists access for AI assistants through Canva MCP, a standard way for agents to use tools, as coming soon, again with no date. The sources do not state API pricing. The ranking, and the claim that Craft makes Canva the second most advanced image lab, come from Canva's reading of one leaderboard. The sources include no independent tests.
Teams that build marketing tools, online shops, ad builders or print services can now call Craft from their own software. Canva says the API is a quick way to try Craft on their own prompts and compare it with other models. Since the ranking rests on one crowdsourced board, that kind of side-by-side test is the check available today.