Canva India’s Chandrika Deb says AI lowers creative barriers, but judgement still matters

Canva India’s country manager, Chandrika Deb, said artificial intelligence is widening access to creative work by reducing the skill, resource and knowledge barriers that can stop people turning ideas into finished output. Her argument at TechSparks 2026 was that AI does not create creativity itself, but “democratis[es] the ability to act on your creativity.” The shift can help a small-business owner move more quickly from an idea to a visualised product, she said, while making iteration easier. AI can also address an ideation problem, such as when someone wants to make a video but lacks a subject, and can reduce the staffing resources once needed for production, according to YourStory’s account of the discussion. Canva positions itself as “a collaborator, a partner and an enabler” rather than as a substitute for creative people. Its first decade focused on putting fragmented, expensive design tools into a single online editor; Deb said its current focus is to bring dispersed AI platforms and workflows together so businesses can work more efficiently. That approach is changing who can participate in creative work. Founders, marketers, product staff and salespeople can begin shaping work before a specialist design team enters the process. But Deb said specialists in craft, cultural nuance and audience understanding remain essential, as do creative-operations staff who can keep AI-assisted material on brand. Human judgement, intent and a point of view matter especially as AI-generated creators and near-identical AI visuals proliferate on social feeds, Deb said. Deciding whether a result is the best response to a prompt still requires judgement, and that judgement is what makes output relevant to an intended audience. The same constraint applies to AI-enabled personalisation. AI can let brands create material across more audience segments, formats and languages, including multilingual content that accounts for cultural nuances. But, Deb warned, “Personalisation becomes noise when your audience sees no benefit.” Technology alone cannot make material relevant. Canva said 97% of marketers it surveyed use AI in some form. Deb also said 95% of Fortune 500 companies use Canva and its AI features, and that businesses are adopting such tools organically because employees find they solve real problems, rather than because use is imposed from above. The company has launched the campaign “Aap aur Canva, Jodi Wah Wah,” presenting Canva as a creative partner and seeking to address people’s lack of confidence in exploring creativity. Deb said AI can reduce inhibition, allowing people to move more seamlessly from ideas to output and to refine those ideas. Research from Georgetown University has raised separate questions about AI and creativity. Adam Green and colleagues examined more than 370,000 college-admissions essays written before and after ChatGPT’s 2022 release. Their study found that essays produced after generative AI’s arrival used a wider variety of words but often contained fewer original ideas; creativity experts also rated ChatGPT-assisted essays as more creative even when the underlying ideas were not necessarily more creative. Green said AI-generated ideas can be good but tend to resemble one another, potentially narrowing the diversity of human ideas. He recommends beginning with one’s own ideas, then using AI to sharpen concepts or assess possible problems, while employing the technology for less creative tasks that can free time for creative thinking. Deb said leaders should develop early-career staff through feedback and mentoring so that people learning to use AI build better judgement and use the tools efficiently and responsibly.