Best AI Design Software Shortlist
With so many AI tools popping up every day, figuring out which one is right for you is tough. You know you want to harnesses the power of artificial intelligence to automate time-consuming tasks, understand user preferences, make suggestions based on those preferences, and even offer predictive design elements, but need to figure out which tool is best. I've got you! In this post I'll help make your choice easy, sharing my personal experiences exploring dozens of different AI tools and seeing them in action with diverse products, with my picks of the best AI design software.
What Is AI Design Software?
AI design software is an advanced technology tool that incorporates the intelligence of artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms into visual design processes. It allows designers to create more precise and personalized visuals faster and more efficiently. Key features typically include design automation, intelligent recommendations, personalized user experiences, adjustable settings for AI controls, and integration with other design tools.
Additionally, the tool might also offer resources for training the AI and capabilities for data analysis to inform future designs.
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AI Design Software Comparison Table
This comparison table summarizes pricing details for my top AI design software selections:
| Tool | Best For | Trial Info | Price | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Best for AI website design | Free plan available | From $17/month | Website | |
| 2 | Best for real-time collaboration | Free plan available | From $15/month (billed annually) | Website | |
| 3 | Best for transforming hand-drawn sketches drawings to wireframes | Free plan available | From $12/user/month (billed annually) | Website | |
| 4 | Best for generating art with glitch effects | 7-day free trial | From $2.49/user/month | Website | |
| 5 | Best tool with a generative fill feature | Free plan available | From $9.99/month | Website | |
| 6 | Best for AI art generation | 7-day free trial available | From $59/month (billed annually) | Website | |
| 7 | Best AI design tool with a brand kit offering | Free plan available | From $96/year | Website | |
| 8 | Best for generating AI-inspired presentations | Free plan available | From $10/month | Website | |
| 9 | Best for creating compelling social media posts | Free plan available | From $9.90/month | Website | |
| 10 | Best for generating color palette recommendations | Free plan available | Pricing upon request | Website |
Overviews Of The Best AI Design Software
Here’s my in-depth review of each tool. I’ll walk you through the pros & cons, features and functionality to highlight what makes each tool great.
Wix
Best for AI website design
Wix is a cloud-based website builder designed for individuals and businesses looking to create their own websites with ease. It offers a variety of templates and design tools that cater to different industries, enabling users to customize their online presence without requiring extensive technical skills.
Why I picked Wix: Wix's AI website builder stands out for its ability to generate a complete website based on your input. By answering a few questions, you receive a site with a design, layout, and content that reflect your business's unique identity. This feature saves time and ensures your website aligns with your brand's vision.
Additionally, Wix offers built-in business solutions that integrate seamlessly into your site. Whether you need scheduling tools, an online store, or event management features, Wix's AI includes these elements automatically.
Wix Standout Features and Integrations
Features include AI-generated text, which helps you craft engaging content by providing suggestions tailored to your site's context. The AI image generator allows you to create high-quality visuals that match your brand's style. Additionally, the theme assistant offers design recommendations, ensuring your site's appearance is cohesive and professional.
Integrations include Google Analytics, Google Ads, Facebook Catalog, Mailchimp, HubSpot, Omnisend, Meta Pixel, Salesforce, Pipedrive, Stripe, PayPal, and QuickBooks.
Pros and Cons
Pros:
- A wide selection of apps and widgets
- User-friendly drag-and-drop editor
- Provides over 900 customizable templates
Cons:
- Can't switch templates without creating a whole new site
- Storage limits on lower-tier plans
Canva
Best for real-time collaboration
Canva is a design platform that lets people create and share visual content in one place. It’s built for anyone who needs to design graphics, presentations, or documents without relying on advanced technical skills. The tool makes it simple to design, edit, and publish across devices.
Why I picked Canva: Canva gives you a shared space where you and your team can work on the same design at the same time. You can leave comments, assign tasks, and track changes right inside the editor. It also lets you share links to designs for quick feedback.
Canva Standout Features and Integrations
Features include a template library that covers everything from presentations to social posts. You can use brand kits to keep your colors, fonts, and logos consistent across designs. There’s also a content scheduler that helps you plan and publish designs directly to your social channels.
Integrations include Google Drive, Dropbox, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Slack, Microsoft Teams, YouTube, and HubSpot.
Pros and Cons
Pros:
- Templates for almost every use case
- Collaboration feels natural and simple
- Easy to manage brand assets
Cons:
- Export settings can feel restrictive
- Limited control over advanced design edits
Uizard
Best for transforming hand-drawn sketches drawings to wireframes
Uizard strives to revolutionize design for non-designers. The platform offers useful no-code tools to generate UI/UX designs, prototypes and wireframes. As a result, Uizard can help you throughout the product development lifecycle process.
Why I picked Uizard: I’m thrilled by the drawing-to-wireframe conversion feature that Uizard offers. For product managers looking to kickstart a product development sprint, Uizard is the perfect ally. You can quickly progress from an idea to a mockup to a functional prototype.
Furthermore, you can easily transform low-fidelity wireframes into high-fidelity mockups. Uizard’s drag-and-drop editor makes UI design super simple. Uizard also recently rolled out a new “Autodesigner'' feature that generates multi-screen designs from text prompts.
Uizard Standout Features and Integrations
Features include the screenshot to mockup transformation capability. Simply upload a screenshot of any random website or application, and Uizard AI generates an editable mockup. As a result, you can get off the blocks quickly and draw inspiration from other UI/UX designs.
Integration details are currently not available.
Pros and Cons
Pros:
- Rapid prototyping
- Great collaboration features
- Easy UI screen linking
Cons:
- Bugs with individual clicking and dragging of elements
- Occasional glitches with editing text
Pixlr
Best for generating art with glitch effects
Pixlr is an online design platform that helps people create, edit, and enhance images directly in their browser. It’s used by individuals and teams who want quick ways to build visuals without downloading heavy software. The tool supports creative work by combining editing tools, templates, and AI-powered features.
Why I picked Pixlr: Pixlr lets you generate original images with unique glitch-inspired effects that add a modern look to your work. You can use text prompts to create custom art styles that feel bold and experimental. The editor gives you layers, filters, and blending modes to refine results.
Pixlr Standout Features and Integrations
Features include background removal that works automatically in seconds. You can apply pre-set filters that change the mood of your design with one click. There’s also a collage maker that helps you combine multiple images into one layout.
Integrations include Google Drive, Dropbox, Google Photos, and Facebook.
Pros and Cons
Pros:
- Flexible layer-based editing system
- Fast browser-based design workflow
- Wide range of editing tools
Cons:
- Occasional bugs in AI features
- Larger files may load slowly
Best tool with a generative fill feature
Adobe Firefly offers intuitive AI image-generation tools to enhance your natural creativity. The platform provides valuable useful tools like text-to-image, generative fill, text effects, recolors, and more.
Why I picked Adobe Firefly: I’m particularly impressed by Firefly’s generative fill feature. Generative fill allows you to manipulate specific sections in a photograph. For instance, you can remove bystanders in the background of your portrait with the Eiffel Tower.
Adobe Firefly, powered by the Adobe Sensei AI, intelligently “imagines” what the intended scene would look like and fills in with relevant content. Furthermore, Firefly allows you to control the “content preservation” index - meaning you can tweak how much of the original content must be retained.
Adobe Firefly Standout Features and Integrations
Features include the generative recolor capability. You can define new color schemes for your vectors. Additionally, you can describe your color scheme via text.
Integrations will include Adobe products like Creative Cloud, Experience Cloud, Experience Cloud, Illustrator, Photoshop, Stock, and others. Currently, Adobe Firefly doesn’t support integrations.
Pros and Cons
Pros:
- Straightforward UI
- Context-aware generation
- High-quality outputs
Cons:
- Adobe watermarks
- No video AI features
Jasper is a complete AI-powered marketing powerhouse, complete with copywriting and image generation features. Start with a prompt, and Jasper AI translates your design ideas into amazing images.
Why I picked Jasper: I love the AI art features that Jasper offers. Jasper processes attributes like style, medium and artist to generate images that match your expectations. For instance, you can select a 3D render style, a modern oil painting medium, and a Pixar artist look - to generate a movie poster.
Jasper allows you to generate images from templates or a free form mode. The latter involves defining your own prompts for the AI to generate images.
Jasper Standout Features and Integration
Features include Jasper’s “brand voice”. You can train Jasper AI to generate AI art that resonates with your brand and style guidelines.
Integrations are available via its API. You can also access thousands of additional apps by connecting Jasper to Zapier.
Pros and Cons
Pros:
- Helpful Facebook community
- Useful Chrome extension
- Intuitive UI
Cons:
- No native SEO features
- Slightly steep learning curve for beginners
Like other tools in this list, Looka strives to make design accessible to everyone. Looka’s AI-powered graphic design solutions help you generate valuable designs for your brand. Looka features a robust logo maker and a brand kit offering that eases your design workloads.
Why I picked Looka: I’m particularly interested in the brand kit features that Looka offers. The brand kit is a compilation of 300+ customized templates. Looka generates these templates specifically for your brand. As a result, these templates would don your logo, fonts, and brand colors.
From Looka’s dashboard, you can effortlessly create various marketing collateral like letterheads, blog banners, presentations and brochures. Moreover, you can also define corporate guidelines for your brand by generating custom brand guidelines and email signatures.
Looka Standout Features and Integrations
Features include the logo maker tool. The tool requires only your brand name and industry. Subsequently, Looka’s AI generates several funky and attractive logos. You can further refine the designs by customizing the colors and fonts.
Integration details are currently not available.
Pros and Cons
Pros:
- Export to PNG, SVG and other formats
- User-friendly interface
- Comprehensive branding options
Cons:
- Limited options for customization
- Stringent refund policy
Tome leverages AI to convert your ideas into visually stunning narratives. Tome is a storytelling productivity platform that converts your prompts into amazing presentations. However, Tome is much more than a mere presentation maker. The tool also offers interactive embeds for product prototype walkthroughs.
Why I picked Tome: I recall poring over PowerPoint presentations during my stint as a product manager. The blank slide with the blinking cursor would breathe anxiety into my soul. With Tome, you can quickly generate AI-inspired presentations. The AI drafts will serve as a good starting point for you to tee off from.
Tome offers immersive viewing that dynamically adjusts content for various screens. Additionally, the platform provides several useful templates for various use cases. I particularly like the “Forest Theme.”
Tome Standout Features and Integrations
Features include the AV overlay offering. Tome enables you to narrate and add immersive AV overlays to your presentations. As a result, you can impart a more personalized touch.
Integrations include Figma, Framer, Miro, Spline, Twitter, and YouTube.
Pros and Cons
Pros:
- Generates contextual and relevant information
- Great for professional storytelling
- Vast template collection
Cons:
- Not completely flexible
- Occasional platform glitches
Designs.ai is a cloud platform that leverages AI to ease the process of designing. The team behind Designs.ai is on a mission to make the design process more accessible to everybody. Designs.ai helps create stunning graphics, smart mockups and personalized logos - all in a matter of minutes.
Why I picked Designs.ai: With the advent of TikTok and Instagram Reels, people’s attention spans are at an all-time low. As a result, it’s critical to tailor your social media posts to nail that first impression with social media shoppers. Designs.ai features a fantastic “Designmaker” tool that helps you create aesthetically pleasing social media posts.
With Designs.ai, you can create an entire marketing campaign in clicks. Firstly, you would have to enter some basic information about your brand. Designs.ai then generates thousands of variations and gives you design recommendations. Subsequently, you can leverage the smart editor to change color palettes and typography for a well-rounded finish.
Designs.ai Standout Features and Integrations
Features include the brand kit integration tool, which allows you to apply your unique brand style across brochures, ads, flyers and other marketing collateral.
Integration details are currently unavailable.
Pros and Cons
Pros:
- Offers stock assets from 123RF (royalty-free platform)
- Intuitive mockup maker
- Great color matcher feature
Cons:
- Customer support could be better
- No mobile app
Khroma uses AI to generate color palette combinations. The platform also allows you to save color combinations. Additionally, Khroma also displays information on your selected colors like the name, RGB values and hex code.
Why I picked Khroma: I’ve always had difficulty selecting colors. Either I go all out by being very funky, or choose bland and dull colors. Khroma helps you strike the sweet spot with colors. The Khroma AI model training kicks off with you having to choose 50 colors. The AI algorithm then generates several color palette combinations.
Khroma features an infinite scroll UI similar to that of Pinterest. The Khroma AI is continuously learning. Therefore, the platform “knows” which combos are popular. As a result, the tool uses this information to suggest combos.
Khroma Standout Features and Integrations
Features include the sheer library of colors to choose from. There are so many colors for making your top 50 selection. My personal favorites are “muted light violet” and “muted midtone magenta.”
Integration details are currently not available.
Pros and Cons
Pros:
- Gradient and image design templates
- Intuitive UI
- Generates infinite combinations
Cons:
- Occasional platform glitches
- No integrations with design tools
Other AI Design Software Options
Here are other tools that did not make it to my best list but are still worth considering:
- LetsEnhance.io
Tool with AI-inspired image upscaling features
- Magic Studio
For generating product photoshoots
- Flair
For CPG product photoshoots
- Artiphoria.ai
For creating ultra-realistic images
- Durable
For building AI-inspired websites from scratch
- Midjourney
For generating photorealistic images
- Framer X
For portfolio web design
- DeepArt.io
For transforming photos into art
- Artisto
For editing videos and animations on Android
- DallE 2
For AI-based image editing and retouching
How I Evaluate AI Design Software
Every tool on this list needs to do more than slap an AI label on a template library—I look for tools that let a PM go from a rough product brief to a shareable prototype without waiting on design resources. I break my evaluation into two layers: the core functionality a tool must have to qualify, and the differentiating factors that separate good options from great ones.
Core Functionality (Table Stakes For This List)
When I'm selecting tools for my list, I rank each one on a scale from 0 (does not offer the functionality) to 5 (excels in this area) for each core functionality listed below. Then, I calculate the tool's total score into a percentage. Each tool needs to achieve a minimum total score of 65% to be considered for inclusion.
- AI-Powered Design Generation: I evaluate whether the tool can produce usable wireframes, mockups, or full UI layouts from AI—not just swap colors on a static template.
- Prototyping Capabilities: A good tool lets you build interactive, clickable prototypes you can put in front of stakeholders or use in a usability session.
- Prompt-to-Design Workflow: I look for tools that accept natural language—like a user story or product brief—and turn it into a relevant visual output.
- Design Iteration & Variation: Quick AI-driven regen matters here. I check whether you can tweak a prompt or element and get fresh variations without starting over.
- Collaboration & Handoff: Sharing a prototype link with your engineering lead or leaving comments for your designer should be straightforward, not a workaround.
- Component & Design System Support: Tools that recognize or apply reusable components and brand styles save real time when you're working across multiple screens or products.
Once I have a list of tools that meet the criteria, I consider what sets each platform apart.
Differentiating Factors (What Sets Vendors Apart)
Here's how I compare and contrast different vendors:
Standout Features
PRD and doc ingestion is a big differentiator—tools that pull in a Jira ticket or Notion page and generate a matching screen layout save PMs from manually translating requirements into visual briefs. I also evaluate code generation export, which speeds up handoff by giving engineers usable front-end code instead of a static mockup. AI user testing is worth watching for too. Tools that simulate user behavior or flag usability issues on a prototype let you validate ideas before investing in a full research session.
Beyond Features
Integration ecosystem matters a lot here. I check whether a tool connects to Figma, Jira, Linear, or Notion—because a PM's AI design tool is only useful if it fits into existing workflows. Data security and IP protection also weigh heavily. I look at whether vendors train models on user inputs and whether they offer SOC 2 compliance or SSO. Learning curve is another factor I consider, since many PMs aren't trained designers. Tools with prompt libraries and guided templates tend to drive faster adoption across product teams.
Usability
I’ve prioritized AI design tools that feature an intuitive and straightforward UI. I’ve also indicated if specific tools offer a drag-and-drop interface for facilitating easy design.
Software Integrations
Most tools on this list don’t have native integrations. For the ones that do offer integrations, I’ve mentioned the various possibilities. Ideally, these tools would connect to your design tool and make it easier to work with its output.
Pricing
Like other SaaS products, AI design tools follow a monthly or annual recurring pricing model. I’ve mentioned each tool’s pricing along with their free trial availability. Also, I mention if there is a free version of the software and any other relevant information.
AI Design Software FAQs
Find answers to common questions other people ask about this topic.
What style of artwork can AI generate?
AI tools can generate tons of different kinds of artwork. These tools usually generate artwork based on your prompt inputs and train their models based on massive amounts of visual data available out there. Therefore, AI can generate almost any style you can think of. Some popular art styles include abstract, realistic, manga, surrealism, and cubism.
What is the best free AI designer?
Although entirely free AI tools like TinyWow exist, the best AI tools usually offer a free trial or credits for you to test the waters. Tools like Midjourney and Leonardo.ai are great AI-inspired design tools that allow you to generate a fixed number of images as part of their free plans.
Does ChatGPT generate images?
Currently, ChatGPT can’t draw pictures or generate images. However, OpenAI (the company behind ChatGPT) did release DALL-E2 which is a text-to-image generating tool.
What’s Next?
Selecting the right AI design software can go a long way in streamlining your design and creative workflows. If you’re looking for tools to kickstart your creative process or organize your visual inspiration, check out the best moodboard software to complement your AI design toolkit.
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