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Generative AI ranges from gimmicky to powerful, depending on its context. But the biggest shortcoming is that whatever you make isnt really all that editable you typically have to juggle several apps to get the outcome you want. Now, a new update to Canva, called Ask @Canva, makes just about everything youre working on editable by AI with a tap and a request. Ask @Canva is built upon Canvas first foundational modelan AI model it trained in-house specifically for its own purposes. Instead of generating static designs, it produces new projects as full, editable design templates. That means when Canva uses AI to generate your slide deck or social post, all of the text and photos are discreetly editable with the same basic interface Canva has offered for years. [Image: Canva] Typography is pulled from its library to match the tone of your work. Images and illustrations are generated by default, but swappable with your own. At the core of all of Canvas UX is invisible AI arranging and rearranging your work with aesthetic balance. But now, Canva is putting generative AI within close reach on every element in your work. Think of Ask @Canva as a design intern, or perhaps save me! button, that you can request to redesign or rewrite any element on the pageand even critique your entire project. [Image: Canva] How Ask @Canva works The feature follows Canvas aggressive adoption of generative AI into its UX. In 2023, Canva was the first in its peer group to bring barebones generative AI into its app. Then in 2024, it introduced Magic Studio, a suite of AI tools that solved practical problems for users (like extending an image or creating a simple animation). Earlier this year, it introduced the Visual Suite 2.0its biggest front end redesign in 13 years, which basically consolidates a lot of the app and its varying templates within a single window, so you could completely rebuild your project, switching it from a slide deck to a website, all while remaining within your main canvas in the Canva app. With its new model, Canva is repositioning its app as a creative operating system that uses AI to bind all media together. All of Canvas just make it for me AI tools should improve alongside the update. There is one big difference, however, in terms of Canvas new approach to AI beyond mere improvements to the model: Now, when you select anything on a pagea block of text, an image, a background colora tooltip pops up with an option to Ask @Canva. Tap it, and you can simply ask the software to do whatever youd like it to do to the asset in plain languageas if youre talking to a colleague, but the colleague is a robot. [Image: Canva] Ask Canva is part of our commenting . . . system, and it now lets you interact with Canva like it’s a collaborator, explains Cameron Adams, cofounder and chief product officer at Canva. What makes Ask @Canva so powerful is that it understands both the element youre highlighting and its context within the greater project youre editing. So you might ask Canva to change an images illustration style to better match others on the page (a method traditionally known as style transfer). In a demo, Adams successfully asks the system to make a slice of pizza float in space. These AI edits all happen in situ. That said, you can also use Ask @Canva a step zoomed out, requesting its advice for how you should change your design. Im amused when Adams does this, and Ask @Canva compliments his use of a purple-blue gradient (which is so on-brand for Canva I cant tell if the AI understands its brand standards or if its algorithmic bias). But the AI also (astutely) calls out an unflattering contrast between the left and right sides of the page. It was the same critique I had waiting on my tongue. [Image: Canva] Building AI into every layer of Canva The human versus automated balance that Canva is working toward with AI has been interesting to track. You can now start any project by typing what you want into a Google Search-esque bar. Its AI will now ask you follow ups, tooabout the topic and tone of your projectso that its first draft of whatever you want to create is as close to your vision as possible. [Image: Canva] But Adams recognizes a lot of its customers still dont do that. They prefer to work from Canvas template library and just see a sample that resonates. With Ask @Canva, the company is likely appealing to these customers, too, by offering AI at a deeper layer of the project. Here, AI is not the tool used to start a project creatively from the top, but instead its entrenched deeply inside the interface to help solve a problem for which there may be no other ready tool. Every person is different, and it’s been the same [story] in software development for decades, says Adams. Yu’ve always needed to give people different approaches to the same problem, because some people are visual thinkers. Some people have no idea what they want on the page. For now, the great unifier of AI within Canva seems to be Ask @Canva: a tool hiding a click away for when everything else might fail. Yes, its another iteration of the prompt. But now, its not some grand orchestrator of your vision. Instead, its more like an emergency button available all the time, on every asset.
Category:
E-Commerce
U.S. President Donald Trump hailed a meeting with China’s Xi Jinping as “amazing” and “12” on a 10-point scale, but the agreement the two leaders reached appears to be no more than a fragile truce in a trade war with root causes still unresolved. The framework announced on Thursdaythat includes China resuming soybean purchases, suspending its rare earths export curbs for a year, and the U.S. lowering tariffs on China by 10%broadly rewinds ties to the status that existed before Trump’s “Liberation Day” offensive triggered tit-for-tat escalation. But the deal exposes the fundamental mismatch between what Washington wants and what Beijing is willing to offer. Absent from the talks were the big issues cited by Trump as he launched his tariffs in AprilChina’s industrial policies, manufacturing over-capacity, and its export-led growth model. “So what are we talking about? We are talking about de-escalation of the measures that both sides have taken since the start of the Trump administration in this kind of escalating trade war,” said Emily Kilcrease, director at the Center for a New American Security. The outcome underscores the robustness of Xi’s new approach to dealing with the U.S., which relies on a broad toolbox of measures like export controls, swiftly deployed in response to each move by the Trump administration. An official briefed on the deliberations said the Chinese had a realistic set of expectations for this encounterand those did not include a fundamental reset of two-way ties. They were nonetheless happy with Trump’s tone coming in and his framing of the meeting as a “G2”, said the official, who declined to be named or further identified because he was not authorised to speak to the media. China sees this as a stepping stone to a bigger meeting where they can stabilize the relationship, the official added. ‘World-class leaders’ Given the long-simmering tensions, the very fact that both leaders had a warm meetingand agreed to two follow-up visits next yearoffers rattled multinational corporations caught in the middle a much needed reprieve, say experts. Xi opened the talks, which took place ahead of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, by saying that “China’s development and rejuvenation are not incompatible with President Trump’s goal of Making America Great Again’.” He added that he was willing to work with Trump to “lay a solid foundation for China-U.S. relations and create a favourable environment for the development of both nations.” Trump emerged from the encounter glowing, chit-chatting and leaning into Xi as both left the venue, later calling him the great leader of a great country, and saying that this is how two global superpowers should deal with one another. “When we have this limited time-frame, the deal and the deal-making structure both function as an engagement mechanism between the two countries, so they can address the issues properly and adjust their mutual interests down the road to make sure people keep talking to each other,” said Bo Zhengyuan, Shanghai-based partner at research consultancy Plenum. Trump said that tariffs on Chinese imports would be cut to 47% from around 57% by halving the rate of levies related to trade in fentanyl precursor chemicals to 10% from 20%. Xi will work “very hard to stop the flow” of the chemicals used for the production of the deadly opioid that is the leading cause of American overdose deaths, Trump said, acknowledging that the issue was complex. The tariff was reduced “because I believe they are really taking strong action,” he added. Chinas Foreign Minister Wang Yi emphasised that Trump and Xi were world-class leaders in a Monday call with his U.S. counterpart Marco Rubio. Their long-term engagement and mutual respect have become the most valuable strategic asset in U.S.-China relations, he told his American counterpart, in unusually effusive language for a Chinese diplomat. ‘Difficult situation’ The deal buys both sides some breathing room: Trump gets a win before his planned visit to Beijing in April, Xi gets relief from elevated U.S. tariffs that have put pressure on Chinese manufacturers. But even this tactical detente is incomplete. China’s latest rare earths licensing curbs are delayed, not dismantled, but earlier restrictions on the critical minerals that have upended global trade remain, leaving U.S. factories facing ongoing uncertainty in sourcing critical materials. “I think that what we’ve seen this year has been a more or less total vindication of China’s strategy of never striking first but always striking back,” Joe Mazur, geopolitics analyst at Trivium China, a consultancy. “It’s very clear that rare earths is the primary piece of leverage, the ace in the hole that China is able to wield over the U.S.it doesn’t look like the U.S. has any comparable leverage or any way of breaking the stranglehold for the time being.” The agreement also highlights how dramatically the relationship between the world’s two biggest economies has deteriorated since Trump’s first term, when negotiators produced a comprehensive 96-page document covering intellectual property, banking, and agriculture. This time around, the talks were far less intensive and both sides only offered relatively brief readouts that mostly focused on holding back threats made in the run-up to the talks. Da Wei, the director of Tsinghua University’s Centre for International Security and Strategy, warned that repeated escalations could exhaust Xi and Trump’s personal rapport. “If the escalation of tensions happens many times, probably the patience and trust between the two leaders at a personal level will run out,” he said. “Then we will have a very difficult situation.” Trevor Hunnicutt, Laurie Chen, and Mei Mei Chu, Reuters
Category:
E-Commerce
Starbucks released its fourth-quarter earnings on Wednesday, October 30, finally providing an official figure for its recent wave of store closings. The Seattle-based coffee chain shuttered a total of 627 locations worldwide over the three months, ending up with a net closure of 107 stores. More than 90% of impacted locations were in North America, Starbucks said. In the United States, 520 stores were shuttered as part of the company’s turnaround efforts, Starbucks disclosed in an earnings release. Starbucks now runs 40,990 stores globally and 16,864 in the United States. Estimates of store closures varied widely In September, Starbucks announced the shuttering of stores in North America, but it didnt identify specific locations or an exact figure. Working with limited information, news outlets made a number of different estimates at the time, ranging from around 100 closures to over 400. The number disclosed by Starbucks this week is above even many of the higher-end estimates. Moderators of the subreddit r/Starbucks, meanwhile, had created a crowdsourced Google Doc for confirmed closures. When reached by Fast Company for comment on store closure locations, a Starbucks representative said the company does not have that to share. The representative pointed to a September blog post from CEO Brian Niccols and said, The best place for up-to-date hours of operation for our coffeehouses in the Starbucks app. All part of the plan The significant number of store closures came as part of the companys Back to Starbucks restructuring plan, which Niccols has been championing as key to growing the coffee chain’s foot traffic. In Julys third-quarter earnings report, Starbucks said that the plan focuses on exceptional service, simplified routines, and deeper customer connections. For Starbucks, that means expanding the assistant manager role across U.S. stores, hiring 90% of retail workers internally, and a lot more seating. Yes, Starbucks wants to move away from machines and mobile orders to create a warm, inviting in-store experience. According to Niccol, its working. Were a year into our Back to Starbucks strategy, and its clear that our turnaround is taking hold, he said in a statement. Our return to global comp growth and the momentum were building give me confidence were on the right path to deliver the very best of Starbucks for our customers, partners and shareholders. U.S. stores fell 2% on comparable sales year-over-year (YOY) in quarter three, while this quarter saw comparable sales remain the same YOY. Shares of Starbucks Corporation (Nasdaq: SBUX) were up around 1.17% in early trading on Thursday. The stock is down roughly 7.62% year to date.
Category:
E-Commerce
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