Our Config 2026 Speakers on the Biggest Opportunities With AI | Figma Blog (opens in new tab)

Figma’s Config 2026 speakers see AI as more than a productivity tool: it is expanding the scope of creative work, from software and music to fashion and manufacturing. Their perspectives emphasize human direction, participation, taste, and intention as AI accelerates experimentation. The central opportunity is to use AI to extend creative capacity without losing the distinctly human role of shaping meaning and purpose.

AI as a New Creative Medium

• Holly Herndon describes software as one of the defining artistic mediums of the current era.
• AI enables studios to take on more complex projects, shifting creative roles toward orchestration.
• Herndon and Mat Dryhurst’s Starmirror treats AI models as collective, public endeavors:
  • Visitors and local choirs contribute vocal data.
  • The data will train a new AI choir.
  • Participants engage with both the model’s inputs and outputs.
• The project demonstrates how creative work can keep humans actively involved rather than treating AI as an isolated generator.

Connecting Digital Creativity to the Physical World

• Danit Peleg argues that AI will increasingly create tangible objects, not just digital designs.
• AI is likely to influence:
  • Manufacturing
  • Architecture
  • Fashion
  • Wearable textiles
• Peleg uses AI agents throughout her production pipeline, from initial concepts through fabrication.
• Figma Weave, created after Figma’s acquisition of Weavy, is intended to expand AI-native capabilities for:
  • Image and video generation
  • Animation and motion design
  • VFX creation and editing
• These tools point toward workflows where digital concepts can move more directly into physical production.

Creativity as Attention and Care

• Vicki Tan connects creativity with decision-making: both involve following questions and intuition despite uncertainty.
• She argues that creativity is not primarily originality or talent, but care, attention, and sustained engagement with an idea.
• Her interpretation of the French word attendre—to wait for or tend to—frames creativity as allowing meaning to emerge over time.
• Rather than constantly seeking something completely new, creators can begin by noticing what already feels personal, meaningful, or instinctively theirs.

Rethinking Creative Work in 2026

• The featured speakers come from varied fields, including art, fashion, behavioral design, software strategy, and emerging technology.
• Their work challenges older assumptions about creativity and encourages experimentation with new processes.
• AI’s greatest value may lie in amplifying human judgment, participation, and creative intent rather than replacing them.

Creators should treat AI as an expandable medium and collaborator while preserving the human practices—attention, taste, participation, and purpose—that give creative work meaning.