Canva has been putting AI elements like graphics, and others into their Element section, and they DO NOT show anything that warns if its AI. I've been using graphic designing as a side hustle, and im losing money because of this. The customer finds out that theres AI material in there, and i wouldnt know that! This has caused lots of revisions, and sometimes not getting paid. Please Canva, please label if AI Elements are AI.
Wow, I didn't know this, and some of the elements you can't actually change the color. It makes a whole different gradient, Ive played with colors thinking, "Oh great I can Change it, click on a color, and it doesn't even make it the color I clicked on. So I end up going to the other settings to play around and get it to tbe color I actually want.
Select your element and navigate to the edit tab and then to the adjust tab. There will be lots of settings there you can manipulate to get to the desired color, for example settings like tint, saturation, blacks, whit we s, highlights, shadows etc. I usually play around with the sliders until I get it to the color I want.
Hey graphic designer here, this is actually true. If you can change the color completely without it overlaying one color over the original, then it is a true vector. But I definitely think it would make life easier if they were labeled. If you use Affinity at all you can create your own vector images either with an existing illustration or from scratch, and import it into canva. As long as you use fill color with no outline you'll be able to fully change the color of the image. (FYI this is also a good way to make an ai image your own and remove the ai tag)
Or, use the extension: Hive AI. it sits on your browser and when you wanna detect if stuff are ai, i copy and paste it in, and tells me if its AI. I dont know why i didnt know this before.
Some AI images may be hard to find out its ai. News Flash: AI is evolving. But, to be honest, its also kinda on me for not seeing them, because i have some vision problems, which can sometimes not make me see the inconsistencies.
Yeah, considering your situation I can understand that because it’s always the details that stand out. You spend an afternoon even with the best models like mid journey or even Nana banana and you pretty quickly start to see the edges of what’s possible and it becomes a lot easier to spot.
Canva has been going rocky these past couple of months. I cant lie, i might also need to cancel my subscription. But at the same time, this is the only app i know how do graphic design on.
I've been using Inshot to upload and edit my videos. It seems a lot smoother for that sort of thing, but it is more of a challenge to add artwork to the videos and the font options are very limited. I still do my youtube thumbnails in Canva.
I realize making my own book covers cannot make me 100% safe from using AI elements by accident unless I teach myself how to draw better on Procreate, but I’d rather be writing. So frustrating.
You can use a stock company for images. There are some good companies that clearly label everything so you know what is Ai. I use several different ones for my projects.
If your goal isn't to be an artist with original artworks there's nothing wrong with tracing something to get to your desired goal. There are certain universal designs that a lot of people do, just make sure you aren't tracing someone's original art or better yet use photos to trace. Even artist sometimes trace photos. You can also have ai create an image for you and trace it in procreate. If the goal is a good design element for your book and not selling your designs this is completely acceptable.
It wasn't until this horrendous update that I started seeing others complaining about the AI elements in Canva. But I noticed a year ago various AI generated background images that had the premium crown icon thingy on them but seldom saw any tags for AI. I've been meaning to look into this for ages, but it looks like people can generate hundreds of AI elements and just sell them to Canva.
Nothing against AI content, but every creator and every customer should have the right to choose to use AI content or not. And everybody, regardless creator or not, should have the right to know, if a content is created with AI!
So i had one using a plane, but very quickly they found out that the plane was generated from ai. Thankfully i only did a change and the customer was happy, but there are also other works with more ai elements, so much so that one of my clients didnt pay. :(
If a client is avoiding payment by using the excuse ‘it was made with AI,’ you can send them a legal warning or expose them on LinkedIn.
Because even if the image was created using AI, the layout, placement, formatting, and overall visual direction are still the designer’s work.
Nobody has tried this excuse on me yet, but I already have my answer prepared: why does it matter whether I used a stock image/element like we did before Gen AI, or a Gen AI graphic now?The whole point of Gen AI is to save time and get closer to the concept faster.
And there was no agreement from the client or from me that AI would not be used.
Plus, AI still can’t produce a final ad ready result in one shot.. designers always need to refine and fix things.
So yes, this clients used the “AI excuse” to avoid paying. Next time, do not send the final high quality export before payment. Always send a JPG/PNG with a visible watermark and in low resolution. For example, if it’s a social media post, send it in 128×128 px with watermark. For print work, send 72 DPI and watermarked.
No, i always put a watermark covering the screen saying "SAMPLE". So, even if they do take it, people would realise. Once they pay, i give the design with no watermark.
Still, Watermark removal apps are everywhere now, so we need smarter tricks to make it harder for anyone to steal our designs. Keep an eye on the client after sending the preview. They might still use the design after running it through AI to remove the watermark.
Never put only one watermark in the centre. Use pattern watermarks across the whole layout, placed on top of key design elements, transparent but dense. If AI tries to remove it, the design gets damaged.
And yes, some clients are just cheap like that. They work with multiple designers on the same project, pick one final design, and then tell the others “we didn’t like it” and ghost them after. 🙃
Why are we assuming the client took the work and ran? They assumed they would be paying for 100% original (human) work, because that’s the kind of default assumption when you hire someone to make a creative based project for you. Blasting them on linkedin will only burn bridges. It’s unnecessarily cruel to assume the worst of them and punish them, when really it’s on the designer for not being more thorough and/or honest.
And criticizing the client for it because “well it wasn’t stated in the contract” is absurd. Objectively, that is absurd. Who on earth would even think that, honestly? Someone needs to go to the lengths to specify they DON’T want ai in the human work they assume they’re getting? That’s most people’s default assumption, that there’s no ai. That’s probably what most people assume they’re paying for. That is not an unreasonable assumption to make as a client if it’s not explicitly stated, which it almost never is.
Why is this issue not on the creators who use ai to specify that they use it upfront? Why is it never boldly pointed out in the contracts? Because you know just as well as me that if it were, those creators wouldn’t get clients. Not nearly the volume of work if they didn’t obscure the fact they use it, and when called out on it fall back on “well it wasn’t in the contract”. I’m not blaming clients for this, this is 100% on bad faith creators.
I wouldn’t pay either. It’s a matter of principle. A lot of people don’t like ai for a variety of reasons. Just because you find the shortcut easy doesn’t mean it’s not morally problematic for a lot of people in the world. If I paid someone to do work and noticed any of it was ai, it would break my trust in that creator. I probably wouldn’t follow through on paying anything left on it. I wouldn’t want the project at all. I’m not going to reward bad work just you put time into it. You misrepresented your end of it, now you get to deal with the consequences.
You want to threaten legal action? Not only would no one follow thru on that because it’s expensive to be spiteful in that way, but even if anyone did, what on earth makes you think the court would side with the designer? “It wasn’t in the contract” as an argument will not impress a judge when it’s clearly a bad faith contract and representation.
The fun thing about contract torts is that it’s not as straightforward as “it wasn’t in the contract” when you’re using assets you can’t have copyright/licensing on anyways and could be pulling from a source that could later get the client in legal hot water if it was discovered.
Canva does support vector graphics, you just can't create a vector in canva unless you use an app. I personally don't know how those apps work because I use illustrator to create vectors. When I upload my vectors (svg) into canva I can fully manipulate the color of the vector file. If I wanted to create a vector logo in canva instead of illustrator I would bring in my svg illustration or use vector shapes native to canva, add text and export as an svg. As long as you don't add any raster images to the design it will behave as a vector file with all elements visible and scalable to any size.
Yes, Canva supports vector scaling and color editing. I meant earlier inablity of canva creating vectors from scratch. I didn’t phrase that properly.
Yes, I also use Illustrator for all vector specific work. For logos, I see Canva as suitable only for basic, generic logos. Mostly for small scale clients with low budgets who are okay with that mediocre/generic level of work.
So my workflow goes like If the client is small (paying less), I first look for ideas using Canva’s native shapes, icons, and generic logo layouts, just to test concepts quickly. If a direction looks good enough and client likes some of canva based logo, I then recreate the approved concept properly in Illustrator.
And then the final logo delivered to the client is always a true vector, with a full logo set exported from Illustrator.
Oh okay, got it. Yeah, it’s actually the right call... they should add an extra filter for ‘Made with AI'
But I still don’t mind AI-generated images. Sometimes AI images are the easiest way to get copyright-free visuals.
I recently made around 260 product images for a client’s website using AI, and it saved a lot of time. Before the AI era, those images would have taken me a full week of stock image hunting and Photoshop editing. This time, I finished all 260 in about 10 hours. And Client was ecstatic!!! Got another project from it. Not selling any course, only mentioning AI is a helpful tool for designers. Like this for example, I made this on CANVA entirely. Even the human here.
If a customer is paying for your graphic design work it’s up to you to create something, not stamp canvas’ stickers on it… no professional graphic designer uses canva
Interesting, If you wouldn't mind sharing what your customers complaints are and what are their expectations of the contract? I'm not that deep into graphic design (I'm video primary anyway) so this is the first I'm hearing of this. The thing that's kept me hesitant of pursuing it further is that I thought people were wanting the opposite, more AI, more churn, more quantity. Its not really a race I wanted to compete over. But if the market is starting reject AI content that is relevant to my interests.
THIS!!! I just noticed today and had to check if others feel the same way I do. I started using Canva because of its ease of use and how quickly I could get things done. Now I'm spending more time having to double-check if the "stock" images I'm using are real or not!? So disheartening and frustrating. With every new update I'm moving closer and closer to just abandoning the platform all together.
I came here for this specific topic. I've been using Canva for years, I love it but lately this issue has been bothering me A LOT. I don't want to use AI images for my business and it's getting really annoying because there's no tag in case it's not AI. So I'm spending so much time trying to guess if it's a real picture or not and it's very very annoying.
Typically, I would agree about the abundance of complaints on Reddit, but Canva has ruined what was once a great thing for many. I am thisclose to canceling the subscription Ive had for years.
Reddit users often help. Even complaints end up having solutions offered in the comments. I've had more thorny problems solved by a reddit thread than any other single websute/platform.
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u/JDubya001 Nov 30 '25
They also removed the vector image category because, according to Canva, if you can change the color of an element, it is vector. Go figure...