KO

Articles · AI Design

Canva, Figma and Adobe move into ChatGPT. What designers should take from DevDay

OpenAI's DevDay brought more than twenty announcements. Here are only the ones that touch design work, laid out with diagrams and numbers.

· 4 min read

Translated from the Korean original. Read in Korean

OpenAI's developer event, DevDay, took place in San Francisco on September 29 (in Korea, at 2 a.m. today). There were more than twenty announcements.

The biggest headline was "dots", agents that keep working in the background even after you close the app. But as a designer, what I kept coming back to was something else. Canva, Figma and Adobe moved inside the ChatGPT window.

First, a disclaimer. This is right after the event, so there are almost no hands-on reviews yet. What follows is based on OpenAI's announcements and articles covering the event. I'll also note that I'm building this site with Claude Code.

Three places a plugin can live

The new thing is "plugin extensions". Instead of the old approach of just handing you links in the chat, they put the app's own screen inside ChatGPT. There are three places it can go.

Three places a plugin can live in ChatGPT. A diagram based on the announcement, not the actual interface.
Three places a plugin can live in ChatGPT. A diagram based on the announcement, not the actual interface.

The first is a side panel next to the chat. Canva put its design tools here. You ask for drafts, then edit them right beside the conversation without leaving it.

The second is the file viewer. Files in the chat open in the app. Adobe made PDFs open in Acrobat and images in Photoshop.

The third is the @mention in the message box. Figma put file search here. You call it up with something like "@Figma last week's landing draft".

Plugins can be installed on every plan, including Free. But the file viewer and @mentions only work in the desktop app. For Free and Go users, the web version is only promised "soon". For businesses, OpenAI also opened a marketplace with 32 partner companies, including Adobe and Figma.

The fourth attempt

It's welcome news, but one thing is worth knowing going in. This isn't OpenAI's first attempt to bring other companies' apps into ChatGPT.

ChatGPT's app platform changed four times in three years. The first plugins shut down within about a year, and the GPT Store closes this December.
ChatGPT's app platform changed four times in three years. The first plugins shut down within about a year, and the GPT Store closes this December.

Plugins, launched in March 2023, shut down a little over a year later. GPTs and the GPT Store, launched that November, close on December 11. The Apps SDK arrived in October 2025, and this is the fourth. A Brazilian tech outlet called it "the fourth time in three years".

So rather than hanging your whole workflow on it, trying the one or two plugins you use most is about right. And remember that even if the platform changes again, your original files still live in Figma and Adobe.

Other announcements that touch design work

Pages. A new document type written by people and agents together, with research, diagrams and data visualization in one document. Worth a look if you write a lot of briefs or research summaries.

Collaborative slides. Several people editing one deck at once, exportable to PowerPoint and Google Slides. Promised "in the coming weeks".

Spaces. A place for a team to keep conversations and agents together. It launched alongside @ChatGPT in Slack and Teams.

Dots. Give one a goal and it keeps working with its own cloud computer and browser. It runs on GPT-6 Astra and connects to more than 4,000 apps. The first dot is included in the Pro and Business Premium plans.

And the prices

On the model side, GPT-6.1 Sol arrived. OpenAI says it nearly matches its top model, GPT-6 Astra, at a fifth of the price: $2 input and $10 output per million tokens.

Independent evaluator's overall index and cost per task. One point apart in score, less than a quarter of the cost.
Independent evaluator's overall index and cost per task. One point apart in score, less than a quarter of the cost.

On the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, GPT-6.1 Sol scores 52, one point behind Astra (53). Its cost per index task is $0.72, less than a quarter of Astra's. First place is still Claude Opus 5.5 (58).

OpenAI's own tables show a wider gap in places. On a science-focused terminal benchmark, Sol scored 57.0% and Astra 68.1%. It won't stand in for Astra on everything.

The interesting part is the $2 / $10 price. It's exactly the same as Claude Sonnet 5.5, released a day earlier. The two companies are now going head to head in the middle tier at the same price.

Subscription plans changed too. There's a new top plan at $500 a month (Pro 500), and on the $200 plan, usage for new subscribers was cut in half. Existing subscribers keep what they had. That part has drawn plenty of criticism since the announcement.

So, for now

There isn't much to do today. If you use the ChatGPT desktop app, install the Canva, Figma or Adobe plugin you already use and see how useful it is beside the chat.

The bigger thing is the direction. Design tools are moving into ChatGPT, and ChatGPT is moving into design tools. Wherever you start, you're heading toward the same files. In between, where the original lives and who does the final check is still a person's call. I wrote about that boundary in Why thirty AI drafts don't make the work any shorter.

Sources: OpenAI DevDay 2026 recap, the-decoder, antihype.com.br, DEV Community roundup, The Next Web, THE DAILY BRIEF.

Read next

All articles (10) →