Canva announced a new text-to-image artificial intelligence (AI) generation tool and added several new features to its Visual Suite on Wednesday. The Sydney-based visual communications platform introduced AI image generator Dream Lab, a platform that was built on the tech stack of Leonardo.Ai, just three months after it was acquired. Additionally, it also added new tools such as Magic Write, polls and quizzes, interactive charts, and AI-powered whiteboards to Visual Suites. The company is also expanding Work Kits to teachers, students, and small business owners.

Canva Introduces AI Image Generator Dream Lab

The new Dream Lab, an AI-powered text-to-image generator that can create photos and graphics to help users quickly find the right image for their projects, was announced by the company on Tuesday. The image generation tool is powered by Leonardo.Ai’s Phoenix foundational model and offers various use cases.

While the visual communications platform already offers a Stable Diffusion-based AI image generator to users, Dream Lab offers its unique capabilities to users for both creating high-definition images as well as having granular control over the generated content.

Dream Lab can generate multiple variations of an image in more than 15 different styles based on a text prompt. These styles also include 3D renders and illustrations. The context-aware AI model can also generate multi-subject images as well as photorealistic portraits. Additionally, users can also add an image as a style reference to have more control over the output.

Canva Visual Suite Updated With New Features

Canva also announced several new tools and features for Visual Suite, a collection of tools for content creation across various formats including documents, videos, presentations, and more. The company upgraded several existing tools and added new tools based on requests from its community.

The AI-powered whiteboard has been updated with the ability to sort and summarise text. An interactive Reaction Stickies has also been added that allows collaborators to vote on ideas in real-time. Magic Write is also getting an upgrade with contextual text generation capability which can generate more accurate output as well as refine generated text with a single click.

For videos, Canva has introduced new animation effects and auto-generated captions. The latter can be matched to brand style with a few clicks. Presentations is also getting updated with new interactive chart types and advanced animation effects. Further, a new tool dubbed Custom Mockups has been added which can turn photos into on-brand mockup templates with a single click.

Another new tool called “polls and quizzes” has also been added. Users can create customisable polls and quizzes directly in the editor with this tool. Canva is also making it easier to access the Visual Suite by integrating it with Google Workspace via Gmail, Google Drive, Calendar, Docs, and more.

Separately, Work Kits, the collection of tools, templates, and resources for specific teams in organisations, is also being expanded. Canva stated that it will offer Work Kits to small business owners, teachers, and students. Each of the groups will get customised resources to help them in creating useful visual content.