Canva Apologises After AI Changes ‘Palestine’ to ‘Ukraine’

By Danial Martinus • 29 Apr 2026 in News

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If you’re social media savvy at all, you’re probably familiar with graphic design platform Canva, which lets people put together collages and other social media posts in a relatively user-friendly manner. It’s what this writer uses for all the visuals you see on this website.

Be that as it may, Canva has landed itself in hot water after its ‘Magic Layers’ AI tool was caught repeatedly changing the word ‘Palestine’ to ‘Ukraine’; a bizarre and worrying discovery made by X user @ros_ie9.

“I wish I was f***ing joking.”

I shit you not I put this image into canvas, I press this “magic layers” button, and it turned this poster that said “cats for Palestine” into “cats for ukraine”. I wish I was fucking joking. pic.twitter.com/xSlz0FAkXz

— rosie (@ros_ie9) April 26, 2026

In a post on X, @ros_ie9 points out how the Magic Layers tool turned a poster that initially said “A cat for Palestine” into one that changed the country to Ukraine. She had been using Canva to add credits to the person behind the original artwork, French artist Agathe Singer.

@ros_ie9 claims she accidentally pressed the Magic Layers button, coming across the issue unwittingly.

It’s highly uncharacteristic of any AI tool or software to outright change a key detail, like a country’s name, without direct input from the user. But glaringly, it’s different this time.

Several users reacting to the post were also able to replicate the Palestine-to-Ukraine switch using the same tool, so it’s safe to say it wasn’t a one-off incident. Interestingly, users reported that the use of the word “Gaza” didn’t get the same result.

The ‘Magic Layers’ tool uses AI to allow you to turn an existing image into individual layers, making it easier to edit. (source: Canva)

“We became aware of an issue with our Magic Layers feature and moved quickly to investigate and fix it. It’s now been resolved, and we’re taking steps to make sure it doesn’t happen again,” a Canva spokesperson told Gizmodo.

“We take reports like this very seriously, and we’re putting additional checks in place to help prevent this in future. We’re sorry for any distress this may have caused.”

There’s no way of confirming what training data Canva used for the backbone of Magic Layers, but it clearly shows a bias against Palestine. Whether they were aware of this or not is unknown and can’t be confirmed. But hey, at least they’re taking steps to rectify it.