Good morning, Broadsheet readers! The FTC is imposing rules to make it easier for consumers to cancel subscriptions, Shari Redstone is taking a different strategy to selling BET, and Canva CEO Melanie Perkins enters the A.I. race her own way. Have a restful weekend.
– Like magic. Melanie Perkins has always operated on her own timeline. She founded Canva, the $26-billion visual communications company, with a decade-long vision to challenge every element of digital publishing. So as tech companies recently started debuting new A.I. tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Microsoft’s Bing Chat, she paid close attention—but was not in any rush.
Yesterday, Canva introduced its own A.I. tools, a suite of features that let the 120 million users of its design products add A.I.-generated elements to what they create. Users who are building presentations, creating social media content, or writing documents can ask Canva to take the first stab at drafting that content. For example, given a prompt like “styling proposal from interior decorator,” Canva’s A.I. will spit out a detailed interior decorating presentation. The tool, while not perfect, is supposed to give users a head start.
 A look at Canva’s new A.I. features.Courtesy of Canva Perkins, whom I profiled last year, tends to keep her blinders on at Canva’s headquarters in Sydney, Australia, and avoid dwelling too much on what competitors are up to (at least publicly). But with a goal to make Canva one of the world’s top-tier tech companies—it’s already the most valuable female-founded and -led startup—she’s certainly paying attention.
“What’s been extraordinarily exciting to see is the pace of change in technology,” she told me before this product launch. “What’s really exciting is how rapidly technology is advancing. It really supercharges what we set out to do 10 years ago.”
Unlike some of its competitors, Canva avoids marketing its technology using the buzzword “A.I.” The startup instead has branded its new suite of tools with the word “magic,” a choice that fits with the platform’s effort to make its features seem user-friendly and accessible. “We believe what our customers really want is magic, versus the tech ecosystem that talks a lot about…” she says, trailing off.
 Canva CEO Melanie Perkins.Courtesy of Canva As a business, Canva has set its sights on the enterprise market with the goal to become the next Microsoft or Adobe. The company is still a long way from achieving that milestone, with about $1 billion in annual revenue. But its A.I. debut builds on last fall’s launch of its visual worksuite of enterprise products that compete against tools like Google Docs and PowerPoint.
Canva’s features for brands are geared toward design-minded staffers in large organizations that follow meticulous brand guidelines. The new tools let users fix problems, like automatically replacing an old logo with a new one everywhere it appears within Canva’s ecosystem.
Perkins is known for setting a top priority every year—rework the code base, go international, launch A.I. The launch of the visual worksuite and A.I. products in a single six-month span checked two major ideas off her to-do list. She’s reluctant to say what her next priority is. “We’re going to continue to do what we’ve always been doing, which is to enable people to take their ideas and turn them into design and do that seamlessly and magically,” she says.
Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com
@_emmahinchliffe
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Join us at Brainstorm Health |
April 25-26 in Los Angeles Health care has wrestled with uncertainty in recent years, but business leaders cannot wait for predictability to arrive. Join Chelsea Clinton, Deborah Birx, and Frederique Dame at this year's Brainstorm Health conference. Apply to attend today. |
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- Mobile banking, mobile money. Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser said that the widespread use of mobile banking contributed to the swift collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and the bank runs that followed. While she believes the episode was an isolated problem and that the major financial institutions remain stable, she thinks the ability for people to move millions of dollars in a few minutes will change how banking leaders manage risk in the future. Bloomberg
- Click to Quit. Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan is pushing through a new "Click to Quit" rule that aims to prevent consumers from getting trapped in subscriptions or accidentally signing up for one unknowingly. The rule, which has passed the first phase of acceptance, would require companies to clearly disclose terms and fees before taking payment information and make it as easy for the consumer to cancel as it was to sign up. NPR
- Walk it back. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen appeared to walk back earlier promises of universal deposit insurance, further undermining confidence in smaller banks as the Fed moved forward with an additional interest rate hike. Her statement acknowledged that such a measure would require congressional approval, which is unlikely given Republican opposition. New York Times
- Double firsts. Vertu Capital, Canada's first female-founded private equity firm, has raised $300 million in its inaugural round. Founder Lisa Melchior said that she hopes to invest in six to eight software or software-enabled companies with the money. The Globe and Mail
MOVERS AND SHAKERS: Shivon Zilis has left the board of OpenAI. Fintech company CSI has hired Linda Fischer as COO. At Cohere Health, Kristen Anderson Carucci was promoted to CFO and Malissa Balinky was promoted to COO. Amy Holtzman is the new CMO at CHEQ.
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- BET on its own. Shari Redstone clawed her way to become chairperson of Paramount Global and seems unwilling to hack up the company for parts—even when she received a $3 billion offer for Showtime. But she is taking a different approach with BET, which Diddy, Tyler Perry, and Byron Allen are interested in buying. Puck
- Crypto consequences. Lindsay Lohan was among eight celebrities charged by the Securities and Exchange Commission for promoting cryptocurrency without disclosing that they were paid to do so. Lohan, who promoted an auction for an NFT of one of her songs, was a member of a group that settled the case for a collective $400,000. Kim Kardashian settled a similar lawsuit last year for $1.26 million. Washington Post
- Forget the celebrity. Scarlett Johansson's skincare brand, The Outset, stands out from other celebrity-founded beauty brands in a few ways: She didn't launch with the help of an incubator, she doesn't have a big social media following, and a third of The Outset's consumers are men. Now, she wants consumers to forget it is her brand in the first place. Fast Company
- Incentivizing diversity. The International Aviation Womens Association is calling on airlines to financially incentivize hiring women after a Bloomberg analysis showed women held just 13% of executive posts in the airline industry. The organization's president, Kathleen Guilfoyle, said that quotas are often too punitive, but failing to bring women into leadership will make the airline industry unsustainable. Bloomberg
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The women behind the Montgomery bus boycott NPR
Brie Larson refuses to stick to Hollywood’s script Harper's Bazaar
You just don't silence a drag queen Time
Taylor Swift fans prepare wardrobe, hydration strategies for marathon-length shows Wall Street Journal
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"They often capture women being very set in their ways, and I think that’s a very old bias. I’d love to play a character who’s putting the pieces together. There’s a sort of wide-eyed innocence in spite of being old."
–Succession's J. Smith-Cameron on breaking out of the mother, grandmother, or boss character archetypes for women.
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