For the last five years, Figma has been the undisputed king of UI/UX design. But the rise of generative AI has posed a massive threat to their dominance. Why spend hours drawing rectangles when an AI can generate a fully coded UI component in seconds?
Figma's response is "Figma AI" (often referred to as Make). Let's look at how it stacks up against the new wave of AI-native design tools.
The AI-Native Threat
Tools like Galileo AI, v0 by Vercel, and Lovable are built from the ground up around AI. You prompt them, and they give you UI.
The advantage of these tools is speed and output format. Many of them output actual code (React/Tailwind) rather than just static vectors. This completely bypasses the traditional design-to-development handoff.
Figma's Defensive Strategy
Figma's AI features are designed to augment the traditional workflow, not replace it.
Features like "Make Designs" allow you to generate UI layouts based on text prompts directly onto the canvas. Other features help with renaming layers, translating text, and removing backgrounds.
Who Wins?
Figma still wins for highly complex, enterprise-level design systems where pixel-perfect control and massive component libraries are required.
However, for landing pages, MVPs, and rapid prototyping, the AI-native tools are pulling ahead. The ability to go from a text prompt directly to a functional, coded React component is simply too powerful to ignore.
The modern agency uses Figma for the brand foundation, but relies on AI-native tools for rapid execution.
