Google has launched a Canva alternative with the creation of its new AI-powered design tool, Google Pics. 

Set to make creating posters, flyers and social media graphics easier for everyday users, the new tool brings AI-assisted image creation and editing directly into Google Workspace. 

Google Pics is being positioned by the company as a way for people to more easily create visual content without the need for specialist graphic design software or advanced skills.

At its core, Google Pics combines Google’s Gemini AI with its Nano Banana image-generation technology. Rather than using the tools of graphic design software, users can create images and designs from scratch using prompts. It’s also possible, for example, to edit existing images by selecting an area of the image, graphic or text and describing the desired changes.

The new tool also means a user could generate a social media graphic, change the wording, adjust an object or translate text without having to move between several different applications.

Google Pics can also resize and crop images for different uses, whether for social media, web pages and print. Generated images can be upscaled to 2K or 4K, meanwhile collaborative features makes it simple for designs to be shared with colleagues and others. 

Pics is available as a standalone Workspace application and is integrated with Google Docs and Slides, which means users can edit images without leaving the documents and presentations where they’re already working. Google says Drive integration is also planned. 

That puts Google directly into competition with established design platforms such as Adobe Express and Canva.

The company’s approach is slightly different, however, as it puts AI and its prompt-style method of working at the centre of the design process, rather than providing templates as a basis as the others do. 

Google Pics is now rolling out to selected Google Workspace plans, as well as Google AI Pro, Google AI Ultra subscribers and the Google AI Pro for Education plan. 

Google says eligible users can access it via pics.new, as well as through integrations with Google Docs, Slides and Drive.