Whether you’re a website creator, graphic designer, or startup entrepreneur looking to step up your visual game, then it’s time to check out the latest AI tools that can help you get those creative juices flowing.

An AI design software can help you do just that- by helping you rev up your creative process and make better designs in less time.

In this article, I’ll share the best AI design software you can find based on my own research and testing. Then I’ll break down the pros and cons of each tool so you can find the perfect fit for your design needs.

Say goodbye to forgettable graphics and hello to some seriously impressive designs with this comprehensive AI graphic design tool review.

But first, what exactly do AI graphic design tools do?

In a nutshell, they use the power of artificial intelligence to automate some of the tasks involved in designing, from creating layouts based on a prompt to generating images, color palettes, and more.

I’ll take a deeper look into how these design tools work later on in this article.

First, let’s take a look at my top picks.

  • Disclaimer: This post may contain affiliate links, which means I’ll receive a commission if you purchase through my links, at no extra cost to you. Please read full disclosure for more information.
Logos and FLyers

Designs AI

Full Review

  • AI graphics like flyers, banners, & more.
  • Create social media content.
digital ads

AdCreative

Full Review

  • Create social media graphics in minutes.
  • Social campaign analytics.
Design Pro

Canva

Full Review

  • “Magic Design” to help you create steller designs.
  • Social media, ads, copies, everything.

What is the Best AI Design Software?

Here’s a quick TL;DR of the platforms I reviewed:

Best AI Design Software

1. Designs.ai

Logos & Branding

Designs.ai is actually a suite of design tools powered by artificial intelligence, including an AI copywriting tool, a video maker, and a regular design maker. When it comes to design, they really offer so many different types of tools, that it’s more for businesses looking to make social media content, graphic designs for posters or marketing purposes, and everything in between.

Here are the good and bad of Design AI’s tools:

  • Select from tons of different industries, so you’re sure to find something that matches your niche.
  • They offer tons of design tools such as banner creation, AI writers, calendars, and flyers in just minutes. It’s really a go-to for any of your marketing design tool needs.
  • If you’re just starting out, they make the list of the best AI logo generators.
  • Create social media content, including FaceBook, Instagram, and other PPC Ads.
  • They’re more of a “jack of all trades but a master of none.” They offer so much different variety that I’m afraid they’re not the “best” of just one thing.

Pricing

Designs.ai has 3 pricing plans: Basic, Pro, and Entreprise, but the pricing wasn’t available on the website when I checked it last. You can contact Designs.ai for more information.

Verdict

Designs.ai makes it super easy to design a logo that matches your industry and brand colors, so you can give your business a professional and polished look in minutes.

2. AdCreative.ai

Digital Ads

This AI software is so powerful because it combines two powerful AI features into one: AI copywriting and AI design. In a few clicks, you can generate the copy and creatives for any digital ad campaign you can dream up. Choose multiple layouts and then test them to discover which one performs the best.

Take-home point: If you’re looking to generate and design social media content much more efficiently, then AdCreative is likely going to be your go-to.

Here’s what’s great about AdCreative.ai:

  • You can design branded graphics for your ad campaigns by choosing brand colors and custom stock images.
  • You can choose from over 100 different generations for each campaign.
  • This tool even writes your ad headline and copy for you.
  • It allows you to plug in your socials and analyze the success of each of your campaigns.
  • You can’t edit the designs after they’re generated. This is a huge disadvantage, and I hope they fix this in the future.

Pricing

AdCreative.ai’s pricing structure is a little bit complicated, but essentially, there are 3 pricing levels: Startups, Professionals, and Agencies.

Prices vary based on how many ads you want to create and how many brands you’re creating for. Startup pricing levels have 10 to 100 credits per month, while Agency pricing levels range up to 2000 credits for up to 200 brands. (One credit is used to download and use one generated ad.)

Verdict

There’s really nothing else like AdCreative.ai, so if you need to create multiple creatives for your ad campaigns across various socials like TikTok and Insta, it’s definitely worth a try.

3. Midjourney

AI Art Generator

Among all the hype around AI art generators, Midjourney is the one art generator that really stands out. Its clean, crisp images look like real photographs, paintings, or illustrations.

I’ve had a ton of fun playing with this program and used it to create a three-canvas poster series for my office. If I gave you a Midjourney picture and an artist picture, I willing to bet you would not be able to tell the difference (like the AI art that won a competition).

Simply type in “Create me a 4k photo of a colorful Phoenix, flying after being reborn from the ashes amid a black background”, enhance the version you like, and you have a stellar photo in minutes. You can see more of my Midjourney trials in my post, best art generators.

Here’s what you get when you use Midjourney:

  • A powerful generative AI art generator that takes any text prompt and turns it into extremely high-quality graphics and art.
  • The ability to generate lifelike photos in any pose, with any type of person or object, in any setting.
  • With the paid plan, you can use your generated images anywhere, including for commercial use (the free plan only allows you to use them for personal use).
  • I’m not a fan of it being on Discord as I think it’s a bit of a learning curve for millennials and beyond.

Here are some examples of images generated by Midjourney users:

Pricing

Midjourney offers a free plan, but it’s not always available due to high demand. If you want to pay for a subscription, you can pay a monthly fee for access.

Verdict

If you want to create breathtakingly life-like yet completely unique graphics and images for your business, designs, or creative work, look no further than Midjourney.

4. Adobe Firefly

For Adobe Users

Adobe Firefly is Adobe’s answer to AI design software. It brings the power of generative AI to Adobe’s suite of design tools. While some of the functionality is available, the team is still developing some features, but with the major backing of Adobe, I think we can expect some major innovations coming our way soon.

Here’s what you can do so far with Adobe Firefly:

  • Generate images from text prompts inside Adobe programs.
  • Apply intricate styles to text using a text prompt.
  • Recolor vector art with a prompt.
  • Adobe Firefly is an invite-only beta, and many features are still in development.

And here are some cool things Adobe Firefly will be able to do:

  • Use text prompts to generate or tweak designs using the power of AI.
  • Make dramatic changes to videos in one click, such as changing a sunny outdoor scene into a dark winter scene.
  • Give the tool a design prompt and a moodboard, and it’ll create fully-branded graphics based on your requirements (plus you can edit it with the power of AI).

Pricing

Pricing isn’t available yet, but I assume it will be part of the standard Adobe subscription when it’s fully released.

Verdict

If you’re an avid Adobe user, you’ve got to check out Adobe Firefly. Even if you need to wait a while to use the features you want, it will only get better from here, so I’m excited to see what’s coming down the pipeline.

5. Canva Magic Design

For Canva Users

Businesses that design a lot for social media or need to make designs fast often choose Canva for its fast and easy interface. It’s been a market leader for a reason, and you can bet they’re jumping onto the AI train.

And Canva Magic Design makes it possible to design even faster with the power of AI.

Here’s what you can do so far with Canva Magic Design:

  • Drop a photo or graphic into Canva and watch as it generates a polished design template using your chosen media
  • Quickly and easily update generated designs with Canva’s built-in design tools
  • Generate fully-written and designed presentations from a single text prompt. You can check out my entire list of AI presentation software here as well.
  • You can’t use the text prompt for other design types yet, but hopefully, that will come soon!

Pricing

Magic Design comes with a free Canva account, though design features and available stock images are limited with the free plan. Upgrade to a paid plan if you want more advanced features.

Verdict

If you’re a Canva user, you’ve already got access to Magic Design. Go check it out and see what you can make with it. And if you’re looking for an easy tool to make designs for your business, Canva is the tried and true design platform.

6. Uizard

UI Design

Uizard makes it easy to design UI interfaces (things like websites and apps) without any design background using its sophisticated AI-powered design tools. This is your way to design a user interface (UI) design, without spending thousands of dollars on a UI/UX figma guru.

As someone that recently just paid some heavy cash for a prototype, I wish I had stumbled upon this a bit sooner.

Here are Uizard’s best features:

  • Generate movable, editable mockups from screenshots.
  • Turn a back-of-the-napkin sketch of a layout into a fully functional design automatically.
  • Generate unique UI designs from a photo of a different app or website you want to emulate.
  • You don’t have as much creative control as other apps like Figma, but for quick prototypes to prove product-market fit, this does this trick. It also doesn’t do UX or clickable prototypes.

Pricing

You can start using Uizard for free, then upgrade to one of the paid plans to get the most out of the app.

Verdict

Uizard is a huge help to those who have a great idea for a website or an app, but need a little help in the design department. Try it to save hours you would otherwise spend clicking around in Figma or Adobe XD.

7. VisualEyes

Design Testing

It’s common practice to test an app, website design, or new marketing creative before it’s released to the general public. Usually, designers will show their designs to tons of different people and measure their reactions to see how the design will perform.

VisualEyes has learned from tons of user review data and can “test” each design and give tips for improvement without actually showing it to anyone.

Here’s what VisualEyes can do:

  • Generate heat maps based on common user behavior, so you know where people will most likely look when browsing your site.
  • Give you a clarity score for each design, including ad creatives, that grades how effective the design will be.
  • Test designs inside your favorite apps, including Figma, Adobe XD, and Chrome.
  • The company was recently acquired by a Danish company called Neurons, so it will soon be integrated into another app called Neurons Predict.

Pricing

Pricing wasn’t available on the website. You can apply to access Neurons Predict to start using VisualEyes now.

Verdict

VisualEyes (or Neurons Predict) makes it easier to understand which designs will succeed and which will fail. If you normally conduct user testing with your designs, you should definitely try this app.

8. AutoDraw

Drawing Assistant

AutoDraw is an intuitive online drawing platform designed by Google Creative Lab that uses AI to predict what you want to draw (and then draw it for you).

I tested the app by drawing a jagged line, and it instantly gave me a long list of things I might want to draw, including a jacket, a mountain, and a pyramid. Clicking on any of those options would replace my jagged line with a really clean illustration, much better than my amateur drawing skills.

Here are the key features of AutoDraw:

  • Turn your hand-drawn illustrations into polished illustrations in a couple of clicks.
  • Change the size of graphics, add text and shapes, and change colors as you want.
  • Download your drawings to use wherever you want.
  • This isn’t a sophisticated design tool for polished graphics, more of a quick-sketch tool for diagrams or other visual explanations.

Pricing

AutoDraw is absolutely free to use.

Verdict

Not great at drawing? You can still create graphics and visuals that look hand-drawn by using the totally-free AutoDraw web app.

9. Remove.bg

Smart Background Remover

When you start to look at popular designs out in the world, you see a lot of images with their backgrounds removed. YouTube thumbnails, flyers, and websites often use people’s photos with no background, which looks a lot more professional than a full, uncropped photo.

The problem is, the ability to remove backgrounds from photos has usually been reserved for Canva Pro users or paid app subscribers.

Well no more! Remove.bg is a free web app that uses AI to remove the background of any photo, whether of a person, animal, or object so you can drop those images into any design software you use.

Here’s what you can do with Remove.bg:

  • Drag and drop any photo and remove the background in seconds.
  • Integrate the app with Sketch, Figma, Adobe, or other design apps.
  • Use the Magic Brush tool to remove or restore any part of the photo with just a swipe.

Pricing

This tool is absolutely free!

Verdict

If you’ve ever wanted to remove the background of your photos, but didn’t have access to an app that did that, now you can! Access Remove.bg to try it now.

What is AI Design Software?

AI-powered design tools help people create designs and custom art (or optimize those designs) using the power of artificial intelligence.

Using these tools, you can create logos, flyers, presentations, custom art or stock photos, app or website mockups, and more, without having to design from scratch.

You can even come up with design ideas on the fly, with just a text prompt or a single graphic used as inspiration. This makes it easy for designers and non-designers to quickly generate stunning designs.

How Does an AI Design Tool Work?

Underneath the hood of these AI design tools, you’ll find a combination of algorithms, machine learning, and neural networks.

Algorithms help the software decide how to position elements in a layout, how to use colors, and how to improve a design.

Machine learning is used to analyze millions of pieces of design and art data so the computer can learn how to create realistic art.

And neural networks take tons of data and connect them together, so the computer can learn from the data and make decisions based on it. This helps AI tools figure out how to write human-like text (in the case of AI writers) and put together designs that look like a real designer made them.

Why Use AI Graphic Design Tools?

Here are the benefits:

  • Save Time – The biggest benefit is the time savings. These tools will save you minutes to even hours of painstakingly designing graphics from scratch.
  • Automate Your Creative Workflow – You can combine different AI tools to make it easy to generate designs for different uses. AdCreative.ai, for example, can create ads for your next campaign in just a few clicks.
  • Generate New Ideas – Whether you’re lacking inspiration or just want to see some new variations, AI design tools can help you come up with different design ideas fast.
  • Keep Branding Consistent – Many AI design software can follow your branding guidelines, making sure that all your designs stay consistent.
  • Test Designs – Design testing tools like VisualEyes take all the time and effort out of user testing and give you points of improvement automatically.
  • Improve Your Skills – If you’re a design student or want to improve your skills, you can use AI tools to learn different ways of designing and even improve your current designs.
  • Generate Unique Images – With AI art generators like Midjourney or Jasper AI, you can generate never-before-seen stock images and illustrations customized for your use case.

Who Benefits from AI Graphic Design Tools?

  • Graphic Designers: Professional graphic designers can use these tools to speed up their workflow and generate ideas more quickly.
  • Marketing Professionals: Marketers aren’t necessarily designers, but AI tools make it easy for anyone to design amazing visuals for marketing campaigns.
  • Small Business Owners: Small business owners need to juggle multiple hats, both building the business and marketing it at the same time. AI design tools make it easy to keep up with the business’s design needs.
  • Ad Agencies: Ad agencies can benefit from using an automated design tool for ad campaigns, such as AdCreative.ai, Adobe Firefly, or Canva Magic Design.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Will an AI graphic design tool ever replace a human designer?

Not likely! AI design software can help you design, but it can’t do everything. They’re better used as a design assistant to speed up your design process, help you generate ideas, and automate menial tasks.

What’s the best AI graphic design tool?

It really depends on what you need to design. For overall design help, try Canva’s Magic Design or Adobe Firefly. For UI design, try Uizard. For logos, I recommend Designs.ai. And for image generation, I recommend Midjourney.

How can AI help graphic designers?

Graphic designers can benefit from using an AI-powered tool, even if they’re capable of designing without one. For one, AI tools can come up with new ideas that the designer may not have thought of. And they can make it faster to create a rough draft layout or tweak the design to save the designer time.

Are AI graphic design tools easy to use?

Yes! AI tools are meant to be easy to use for anyone. Most of them can be controlled via text prompts or easy menus, meaning that you can ask for something just like you’d ask a skilled designer in a design brief.

Can I use an AI graphic design tool without design skills?

Yes, you can! Most tools do all the work for you, so you can simply drop in an image for inspiration and it will create a full design from it. Other design tools let you use a prompt to ask for the kind of design and art you want. If you can use ChatGPT or similar tools, you’ll find using AI graphic design tools a breeze.

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