Adobe suite and Office were cloned - now what
I was thinking … where do we find ourselves now with the development of software after the news from last week that the entire Adobe Suite and Microsoft Office were cloned using AI? Is it the finish line for all application development or just the start in the revolution of building new things with a few resources … let’s discuss it.
A single developer (Brandon Thomas) decided that he likes it’s software free and one day he took the matter into his own hands and using AI (Anthropic - Claude) cloned the entire Adobe Suite and some Microsoft Office applications. His project was announced on Reddit and the entire IT community was on fire ever since. Is it good, is it bad, is it ethical, should he be sued ? No one had a definitive answer to these questions because it was never done before (or at least not in direct connection with Adobe/Microsoft or any other big company names).
Here are the apps in no particular order and their counterpart:
PhotoCraft ——> Photoshop
VectorCraft ——> Adobe Illustrator
FilmCraft ——> Adobe Premiere Pro
LightCraft ——> Adobe Lightroom Classic
PdfCraft ——> Adobe Acrobat Pro
EffectCraft ——> Adobe After Effects
DesignCraft ——> Adobe InDesign
FigCraft ——> Adobe XD / Figma Style Application
WordCraft ——> Microsoft Word
SoundCraft ——> Adobe Audition
DeckCraft ——> Microsoft Powerpoint
CADCraft ——> AutoCAD
GridCraft ——> Microsoft Excel
My first reaction hearing this was of complete amazement. Not from an ethical point of view or the fact that the clones are not (yet) able to replicate their source software but the sheer ingenuity of one human being. We had a similar moment, just a few months ago, with OpenClaw the agent that could control and do almost everything for you. They idea of it’s creator was the same and started probably with the same question “What if?“. For OpenClaw was the question What If the agent will be fed real user data and let it solve problems like to “Organizes your inbox, sends emails, manages your calendar, checks you in for flights.
All from WhatsApp, Telegram, or any chat app you already use.”
I believe a similar question, if not the same question went through Brandon’s mind when he decided to clone such well renowned software. What if I would take an AI Agent (or multiple in his case) and, without looking at the code, recreate the software from scratch. Now in this article I won’t go into two things:
whether this is ethical or not - most probably this will be set in court if the project will gain more traction
whether they are to be seen as finished projects. Several of them are still in “early alpha“ or “in development“
What I want to focus on is the fact that this was done by one guy using AI. What time to be alive. It never cease to amaze me how incredible powerful tools like Artificial Intelligence are, when combined with our own gray matter. Sky is the limit when our mind wants to build something and the old breaks are no longer existent. That comes with it’s own positive and negative consequences. As for everything else in life, our mind will dictate if we will harness this power for good or we will find ways to use it for doing bad things. Unfortunately there is no assurance that only good will be done with it.
Is it good what Brandon has achieved? Depending on the one behind reading it’s article it can be one way or the other. I believe, if you have the tool at hand, and you are able to use it in such creative ways, we should do it. This, on one side, will force the companies to rethink their money making software policies (Adobe and Microsoft are known for their practices in service based subscriptions), and on the other hand will motivate more and more people to no longer be scared by software development. Some of you will say, vibe coding is not software development … it’s just bad code written by a machine with no value. Well, even the creator of Linux, mentioned it very clearly when asked about the AI development of Linux “Fork it. Or just walk away.“, so at a minimum I would avoid declaring vibe coding a dead science. I truly believe such coding is the future of software development and the parts where human will still be needed are the controlling and securing the applications of the future.
The changes in the application development landscape will not happen over night but they certainly took a big step forward, taking the example of ArtCraft. Who knows what we will get in the future, starting from a good idea, and perfecting it using our companion, AI.
Until next time, TFG
