Canva apologizes for AI incident replacing Palestine with Ukraine

• Canva’s magic layers tool was reported to replace the word Palestine with Ukraine without any instructions.
• Canva replied apologizing, stating they fixed all mistakes, making sure it never happens again.

Canva, one of the most widely used design platforms, reported on Sunday that its AI tool Magic Layers has been replacing the word Palestine with Ukraine with any user instruction or input.

Read more: Arizona passes resolution replacing “West Bank” with “Judea and Samaria”

Issue reported

The issue was first reported on X. An image was shared showing the Magic Layers tool changing the text from saying "Cats for Palestine" to "Cats for Ukraine." Other Canva users later stated they could replicate the issue and that it only occurred with the word Palestine. Users were able to create projects with the world, Gaza, with no issues

Canvas response

Canva quickly replied and confirmed the issue, stating, "We became aware of an issue with our Magic Layers feature and moved quickly to investigate and fix it. It's now resolved, and we're taking steps to ensure it doesn't happen again. We take reports like this very seriously, and we're putting additional checks in place to help prevent this in the future. We're sorry for any distress this may have caused."

Canva stated they would investigate the issue and make sure it never happens again but did not answer why the word Palestine was censored in the first place. 

AI bias 

Canva was not the first AI to output notable bias against Palestine. As Meta first introduced AI tools on WhatsApp, it would output an image of a boy with a gun when asked to create an image of a Palestinian. ChatGPT also had a notable bias against Palestine when a prompt became viral, showing that it refused to answer the question "Should Palestinians be free?" but easily answered for any other country.