How ChatGPT Enterprise has helped Canva save hours of time and build better tools

• Since August, Canva has been using ChatGPT Enterprise — and it has already seen gains.
• The graphic design platform used the software to build its own AI tools, Canva's head of AI told Insider. 
• Here's what ChatGPT Enterprise has automated — and what it still has to work on.

OpenAI, one of the most influential artificial intelligence firms, rolled out ChatGPT Enterprise, a version of ChatGPT designed for businesses, at the end of August. Two months later, the graphic design platform Canva, one of Enterprise's early adopters, is already saving workers hours of time.

Canva first started experimenting with the basic version of ChatGPT when it launched last year, encouraging its 4,000 employees to use the AI chatbot to boost productivity, Danny Wu, the Sydney-based head of AI products at Canva, told Insider.

In August, the company received an invitation from OpenAI to test ChatGPT Enterprise, which boasts increased security and privacy; high-speed access to GPT-4, OpenAI's most powerful large language model; and more advanced data analysis capabilities. Software firm Zapier, beauty giant Estée Lauder, and consultancy PwC are also among early users.

Canva, which declined to disclose how much it paid for the business version of the AI chatbot, jumped on the opportunity to use it, Wu said. The result has been more advanced, useful, and higher quality responses from the chatbot.

"It's going really well so far," Wu said.

How ChatGPT Enterprise is making Canva's AI products better

Before Canva gained access to ChatGPT Enterprise, employees used the basic version of ChatGPT to do relatively common tasks, like write first drafts of marketing copy, brainstorm ideas for strategy documents, and troubleshoot coding errors, Wu said.

Some employees reported that using the chatbot saved hours of time on certain tasks.

"AI applications like ChatGPT can very much improve workers' lives," Mark Muro, who researches AI's impact on the workforce at the Brookings Institute, previously told Insider.

ChatGPT Enterprise has only amplified these gains by providing more useful and speedy responses, Wu said.

Data analysts at Canva have found that ChatGPT Enterprise allows them to run analyses more quickly, while others have used it to summarize long documents.

ChatGPT Enterprise has also helped software engineers write quality code faster.

"ChatGPT Enterprise has quickly become an integral part of my daily routine," Thomas Hexton, a software engineer at Canva who specializes in frontend development, told Insider over email.

Canva's tools are made up of complex bits of code that could take hours to integrate with one another. With ChatGPT Enterprise, developers were able to generate new lines of code that connect those bits of code together to create a cohesive, working product. What would typically take a developer several hours can now take just one, Wu said.

ChatGPT Enterprise has even helped Canva build out its own suite of generative AI products called Magic Studio, which includes a text-to-image generator, editing tools, and a writing assistant.

"The most surprising one is actually using AI to help us build AI," Wu said.

Canva's text-to-image generator is trained to block prompts that ask the AI to generate images in the style of a specific artist. But before Enterprise, the tool would occasionally block words included in an artist's name — the word "war," for example, because the name "Andy Warhol" is blocked.

Engineers used ChatGPT Enterprise to review Canva's blocklist and flag artist names that were similar to dictionary words for human review. What would've taken a day of engineering time, Wu said, took 10 minutes with ChatGPT.

OpenAI's chatbot can't do everything an employee can do

Of course, ChatGPT Enterprise can't automate everything.

It is unable to access internal information like tax return data, Wu said, which means tasks related to accounting require a human to supply the chatbot with context.

There are also limits on the amount of data it can analyze, something Wu wishes could be adjusted.

Getting employees up to speed on how to use ChatGPT was also a challenge. Before Canva developed an internal AI training program, some employees didn't know how to come up with the right prompts to produce desired answers, Wu said. Teaching employees AI skills been critical in getting value out of the AI for the company.

While the company expects to keep using ChatGPT Enterprise moving forward, it doesn't plan on shrinking Canva's workforce.

"These tools are not being used to replace anyone," Wu said. "They're used to help people."

OpenAI did not respond to Insider's request for comment on ChatGPT Enterprise.