In a leap for AI-powered creativity, Canva has become the first design platform to deeply embed its creative suite into the world’s most advanced AI tools, including ChatGPT.
Two major launches – the deep research connector with ChatGPT and the Canva Model Context Protocol (MCP) Server – turn Canva into a powerful AI platform that plugs seamlessly into AI assistants and agents to securely access your designs and generate new ones, all within the same conversation.
As businesses and creators increasingly adopt AI-first workflows, Canva is pioneering a new era of AI-native design. Whether analysing a marketing campaign, drafting a business plan, or generating social content, you can now brainstorm, design, and publish without leaving your AI assistant, unlocking new levels of creativity and speed.
By bringing Canva’s creative power directly into AI assistants, Canva is redefining how its 240 million users, including 95 per cent of Fortune 500 companies, design, collaborate, and communicate, streamlining the entire content journey from concept to completion.
“AI agents and assistants have become indispensable creative partners, yet current workflows require users to manually add context or references, creating complexity,” said Anwar Haneef, GM and head of ecosystem at Canva.
“We’re embedding Canva directly into the AI tools people use every day so they can brainstorm, create, and publish content faster. This is a major step in our vision to make the complex simple and build an all-in-one AI workflow that’s secure and accessible to all.”
Your Canva designs, accessible in ChatGPT
Canva’s deep research connector with ChatGPT will now connect users’ designs directly to OpenAI’s most advanced model, enabling specific, thoughtful, and context-rich responses grounded in your past work. Without needing to switch between tabs or dig for information, users can simply prompt ChatGPT to analyse or refine content across Canva Docs, Presentations, and more. With instant access to your design history, this integration removes friction and makes cross-platform creation and collaboration effortless.
Privacy and security are built in from the ground up. Every interaction is protected by Canva Shield, the company’s comprehensive AI trust and safety framework.
The Canva deep research connector unlocks productivity and inspiration for:
- Marketers: summarising campaign reports, pulling key messaging from brand guides, and referencing launch plans
- Business owners: analysing business reports, summarizing past meeting notes, and exploring growth plans
- Sales: analysing customer feedback, searching for key value propositions or pricing slides, and preparing proposals
- Educators: pulling key points for lesson plans and curriculum, and referencing past learning objectives
“Launching the Canva deep research connector means businesses and their employees get faster, better insights because ChatGPT has more context. We’re thrilled to work together to bring powerful AI to many of today’s most important workflows,” said Nate Gonzalez, head of business products at OpenAI.
Canva MCP Server: A new era in AI-powered design
Launching today, the Canva Model Context Protocol (MCP) Server allows any AI assistant to tap directly into a user’s full Canva workspace, from design history to creative tools and templates, all within a natural, conversational flow. It brings real-time context into every interaction, enabling AI to generate richer, more relevant content that’s always on-brand and instantly usable.
With one-click integrations for OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Salesforce’s Agentforce and more coming soon, this update brings Canva’s creative power into the top professional AI tools. Designs generated through MCP are visually rich and context-aware, thanks to real-time access to both the user’s Canva account and the ongoing AI conversation.
With the Canva MCP Server, AI assistants and agents can:
- Generate any design type, from social posts to presentations, incorporating context from your chat
- Autofill charts with labelled, formatted data from AI-generated insights
- Resize and export branded templates, from Presentations to Canva Docs, with on-brand, contextual copy
- Import PDFs or files directly from a link, no upload needed
Accelerating Canva’s pluggable AI platform
Canva’s flexible, multi-model AI product strategy, spanning proprietary models, partner models and a robust apps ecosystem, has positioned the company to rapidly adopt emerging frameworks like MCP.
These updates expand on Canva’s continued AI innovation, building on recent launches like Canva AI, Canva Code, and AI-powered content creation in Canva Sheets. Together, these tools accelerate creativity while preserving brand consistency, driving 18 billion AI tool uses as educators, marketers, creators and more embrace AI as an essential creative partner.
