Figma's Dylan Field says AI lowers the floor but not the ceiling

Dylan Field, who runs the design software company Figma, said AI makes it easier for anyone to make digital work. He said so on the podcast All-In, in an episode posted Monday.

This touches the apps on your phone and the slides and documents that land in your inbox. If anyone can build an app, there will be more of them. Field thinks that makes it harder for any one app to stand out.

Field said AI is "lowering the floor" for code, video and design. He said he once believed AI would raise the ceiling on what people can make. He now thinks that was wrong. Here is what he said at 20:41.

"The ceiling has stayed the same. AI is not raising the ceiling. Humans are raising the ceiling, though."

He said app stores keep growing, but people use about the same number of apps. In his words, design is the new code. He also said Figma asks staff to write "written with ai" at the top of anything AI helped write, so readers can trust it.

CNBCTV18 reported on Oct. 16 that Figma is moving from collaborative design toward professional software development. It said new tools aim to help non-developers contribute to working products. Figma sells those tools, so Field has a stake in this view. The story headline says Field discussed why design matters as AI makes coding easier.

Watch the 8 minutes where he explains it.18:47