Figma: How to opt out of AI features?

In early 2025, Figma rolled out AI features that came with a surprise: the company had automatically opted all users in to have their design files used for AI training. Without any notification, consent request, or even a mention in their announcements, Figma enabled AI content training by default for all free and professional accounts. Only Organization and Enterprise accounts, their highest-paying tiers, were not included in this automatic enrollment.

The design community's reaction was swift and furious when users discovered their intellectual property was being used to train Figma's AI models without their knowledge or explicit consent. The backlash was immediate, with designers drawing comparisons to Adobe's similar controversy just months earlier. You'd think companies would learn from their competitors' mistakes, but apparently not.

What makes this particularly bad is the deliberate choice to exempt enterprise customers while silently enrolling individual designers and small teams. The message is clear: your privacy and intellectual property rights are directly proportional to how much you pay.

Figma's approach combines two classic dark patterns:

Preselection: By automatically opting users into AI training, Figma bypassed the decision-making process entirely. Users never had the chance to make an informed choice about whether they wanted their work used for AI training; the decision was made for them.

Privacy Zuckering: Named after Facebook's founder, this pattern involves tricking users into sharing more information than they intended. In this case, designers' creative work, client projects, and proprietary designs were all fair game for AI training without their knowledge.

The Opt-Out Process

While Figma does technically allow users to opt out of AI content training, they've made the process as obscure as possible. The setting isn't in your account preferences, where you'd logically look for it. Instead, it's buried deep in team settings that many users don't even know exist. Here's the convoluted path to protect your work:

Step 1: Navigate to Team Settings

The setting isn't in your personal account settings but rather in your team's account, even free users have a default team setup. Click on the "All projects" button under your team's name to access the team view.

Step 2: Find the Hidden Dropdown

In the team view, look for your team name displayed in large letters at the top with a small chevron indicating a dropdown. This dropdown contains the elusive "View settings" option not exactly where you'd expect privacy controls to live.

Step 3: Access the Settings Modal

Clicking "View settings" presents a settings screen. Here, buried among other options, you'll find an "AI" section. Click on "Manage AI settings" to proceed.

Step 4: Finally Toggle Off

At last, you can toggle off "Train Figma AI models on your content" but only after this treasure hunt through multiple nested menus.

Why This Matters

This isn't just about inconvenience; it's about consent, trust, and intellectual property. Designers work with sensitive client materials, proprietary designs, and creative concepts that represent significant value. By defaulting to AI training without disclosure, Figma:

• Violated user trust by making assumptions about how their work could be used
• Compromised confidentiality for designers working on NDA-protected projects
• Devalued creative work by treating it as free training data
• Created a two-tier system where only enterprise customers' work is protected by default

This incident is part of a troubling trend in the tech industry where companies implement "opt-out" rather than "opt-in" policies for data usage, betting that user inertia and hidden settings will maximize their data collection. Adobe tried it. Now Figma has followed. The question isn't who will be next, but rather: when will companies learn that respecting user consent isn't optional?