Just before the end of October big news rippled across the creative industry. A trio of creative programmes, previously made by Serif (who some time ago were acquired by Canva), known as Affinity Photo, Design and Publisher, have been merged into one piece of software, from now on known simply as “Affinity”. The news brought some apparently positive changes, namely the new Affinity software being available free of charge. In my opinion it is not, however, a good thing. It is not a good thing at all.

If you have any, even marginal knowledge about modern technology world, then you obviously know that there is no such thing as a free piece of software coming from a commercial company. There are many awesome open source projects, which are truly free, but they usually have been maintained from the start by a team of volunteers or a non-profit organisation. Affinity software has always been for profit, similar to Adobe Creative Suite, although Affinity software was available as a one-time purchase instead of a subscription system (which I wholeheartedly believe is a cancer of a modern technology world).

The change of Affinity business model raises a question: what now? How Canva actually monetises this new all-in-one Affinity? One of the obvious ways is by a subscription, which is required to unlock some of tools in the new Affinity, namely mostly functions using AI algorithms. Nevertheless, even if one is not planning to use any of AI functions, a Canva account is now required to actually use the new programme. This move, while allowing Canva to gather data on users of its software, is deeply disturbing for many reasons.

First of all, there is a risk that Canva may use users’ content to train their AI algorithms. This by itself is utterly unacceptable for many people who are more aware of the privacy and copyright concerns regarding feeding some data to Large Language Models and other Artificial Intelligence tools. Secondly, there is a matter of protecting users’ data and telemetry gathered by the software itself. I do not want any data related to my use of software, or to my hardware, to be sent to a server located in a country with poor privacy laws, like USA.

There were two major versions of Affinity programmes, original and V2. When V2 came out the further development of original versions ceased and the situation with the new single Affinity programme is identical. V2, released a couple of years ago and updated up to a couple of weeks ago is now effectively abandoned in favour of the new, shiny, AI-loaded software. V2 will only keep working as long as the software is not broken by some bugs caused by updates of the operating system and its components. It may take years, months or weeks for something like this to happen, and when, not if, it does, users of previous generation of Affinity programmes will be stranded, facing a dilemma: move on to the new app, risking some privacy concerns, among other things, or choose some another software entirely. I have to say that such a decision can only deepen one’s annoyance, since many long-time Affinity users originally migrated to this software after being fed up with Adobe and its efforts for closing up their ecosystem. Now the new all-in-one Affinity programme allows for transfer of project files from previous versions, but it is a one way operation. Once user upgrades their projects to this new programme, files will no longer be compatible with Affinity V2. The new Affinity app uses a new proprietary file format which cannot be accessed by the older apps, nor by any other app. This means that people who decide to move to the new programme will be locked in. In a way it is going to be a worse situation than with Adobe subscription, because Adobe file formats can at least be opened by third party software (I am aware that there may be some compatibility issues, but there is such a possibility at least). New Affinity files can only be opened in the new shiny app, and let us remember that to use that app one has to create a Canva account and accept their Terms of Service.

One way or another, Canva will get their pound of flesh from users of the new Affinity app. It may come in the form of data gathering, using users’ content to train AI algorithms, selling users’ data or performing targeted advertisement, but it will happen. Honestly, I am a little (well, more than a little) surprised by all those comments by various technology-focused bloggers and users of various social media platforms, overfilled with excitement for the prospect of a new integrated app, overlooking consequences for their privacy and for the future of Affinity itself. It’s as if some people forgot that when the product is free, they are the product. And no amount of advertisement and babbling coming from Affinity developers is going to change that.

A decade ago I left Adobe Photoshop in favour of Affinity Photo. Now it looks like I may need to change my photo-editing programme of choice once more. I still have a working V2 version of Affinity Photo, Affinity Designer and Affinity Publisher, and I plan to use them as long as they are usable and safe to use (there will be no more security fixes, among other things, similarly to Windows 10 end of support by Microsoft). But I will not switch to the new Affinity app, not even when it’s “free”, which is a lie. I am not willing to pay for it with my data and I have zero interest in Canva, AI-features or freemium software. I am willing to pay a significant price for a lifetime access to a piece of software that does not spy on me or use my data to feed insatiable AI models.

In the digital world where privacy means so little to so many, I stand against the enshittification of the internet and software. Wherever I have a choice to protect my data or keep even small part of my digital assets away from AI and ad-targeting algorithms, I will always support developers and projects that respect their users and their right to privacy. Affinity no longer does that.

This is article no. 16 from the 100 Days To Offload series.