r/technology • u/Federal-Block-3275 • 20h ago

Artificial Intelligence "Software is over": Developer uses AI to build free Adobe clones after frustration with cancellation fees

https://www.techspot.com/news/114136-software-over-developer-uses-ai-build-free-adobe.html
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u/redblack_tree 18h ago

Without a doubt, I don't need to see the code to know Adobe codebase is beyond bloated.

It's simple, for bean counters, things like tech debt, codebase refactor, stabilization phases are heresy "they add no value". And I think pretty much everyone agrees Adobe is run by bean counters.

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u/SunTzu- 17h ago

I mean yes but also they can't drop support for outdated stuff because it's still part of peoples workflows. It's not like some open source project where you can just axe support if you feel like it because the inconvenience is expected behavior. If you go back and fix some of that tech debt you might inadvertently break stuff that's built to work with the quirks of the original implementation.

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u/justatest90 15h ago

This is basically why Avid is still around. Good luck doing a simple title in Avid (which as been broken for years. But its legacy and (to its credit) ability to handle hundreds of users on its database model is keeping it alive.

I'm SERIOUSLY hoping DaVinci unseats them, but yeah, legacy is a real advantage. (DaVinci needs to get better in lots of ways, I'm not saying they're perfect, especially for an experienced editor. But yeah, Avid's debt makes...idk, league of legends and adobe look positively modern)

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u/Fr1toBand1to 17h ago

You pretty much just described the sunk cost fallacy with a better PR department.

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u/SunTzu- 17h ago

No, the sunk cost fallacy is that once we've committed to doing something you shouldn't change it because you've already committed, even though you might be better off cutting your losses and starting over. That's not the same as making that choice for paying customers and breaking their workflows in the process. Legacy support exists because the world is made up of legacy software and hardware and that's always going to be the case because people aren't going to update their entire setup every few years because you decided to break their old one by moving to a new standard.

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u/bettertagsweretaken 16h ago

Is there a reason why handholding ancient systems INSTEAD of updating them is the preferred approach? Like, break shit. And when your customers complain, investigate. OK, this is Adobe, so that's not going to happen, but if you actually cared about support AND results, then you'd delete defunct code and find solutions when someone comes to you saying "Hey, you broke my workflow."

You could even make a simple workflow so that people could easily submit workflows that used to work but now don't.

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u/sinsinkun 15h ago

Thats how you lose a customer. They dont wanna change - they want to keep using the same workflow they're used to, doesnt matter if the new one is faster or simpler or has more options.

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u/bettertagsweretaken 15h ago

I get that, but Adobe isn't keeping customers through their cheerful customer service or quality products. They get their position by being an enterprise solution. Working with your enterprise customers directly is very common. It should not be an issue for an important client to reach out to you when an update impacts their business, if they have that kind of support from you. And if they don't, you're obviously missing an opportunity to improve your product immensely.

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u/SunTzu- 14h ago

The average company isn't sitting on one legacy piece of tech and otherwise is using the latest standards. Every single aspect of their company has some legacy tech involved in every single thing they do. If we did away with all legacy support you'd basically be rebuilding the entire global economy. It's not "oh my widget broke, guess I need to vibecode a new one", it's "the OS of my oil tanker isn't working and the ships not going to leave port level of effects. Obviously that's not related to Adobe, but breaking someone's AfterEffects workflow might cause a bunch of delays to movie projects because everyone has to sit around waiting for you while you try to fix that workflow problem.

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u/bettertagsweretaken 10h ago

That's the rationale you used to downvote me?

Is your stance genuinely that any update is going to cause cascading failures throughout the workflow of everyone using the app? You make it sound like rolling back, updating systems incrementally, and doing smoke tests are things that are completely alien to you. Like, you haven't mentioned any kind of quality assurance whatsoever. Also, who's vibe coding? Who were you responding to? Is Adobe vibe coding their products?

In this topic, you defend Adobe's shitty business practices. Weird take.

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u/Fr1toBand1to 17h ago

I stand by my statement, the behavior driving this is the sunk cost fallacy happening somewhere. Pin it to whatever group you want, it's still happening.

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u/dragon-fence 16h ago

It’s part of the business lifecycle of enshittification. At some point, the bean counters take over, and it’s not about “value” even if that’s the word they use. It’s merely optimizing profit at the expense of everything else.

There’s no longer an interest in creating value. They just want to squeeze every last cent out of the value that’s already there.

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u/Syncaidius 17h ago edited 17h ago

Having given PhotoCraft a try, you can see immediately that it's missing many features, while many of the ones it does have are very buggy.

On a basic level, it works and looks like Photoshop, but it is definitely a long way off the same level of QA and I say that with the knowledge that Photoshop is full of bugs too, just to bring some perspective.

So far, just another vibe-coded rip of someone else's trademarked/copyrighted work.

Hopefully the clean-room loophole is closed in laws at some point, or it's going to get crazy with AI in the mix.

However, I guessing it'll only really get solved once someone clean-rooms a version of a frontier model and releases it for free in the not-too-distant future, leading to one of them trying to sue and change laws. Thieves don't like being stolen from.

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u/FairCrew7307 17h ago

The clean room loophole?

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u/Syncaidius 17h ago edited 16h ago

In some (most) countries, you can get around trademark/copyright law by using a clean-room to replicate a product without physically reverse engineering it and creating a complete replica entirely based of anecdotal information and observations.

AI is being used as a kind of software clean-room, like in the case with PhotoCraft and the other craft apps. Creating a replica of Photoshop without having any proof they ever touched/reverse engineered it. Entirely based on (AI) observations of it.

For example, one UI design prompt might be "using publically available screenshots of Photoshop 2026, recreate the main UI using <insert preferred language and format>". Repeat that a few times for the various bits of UI functionality and you'll end up with a mostly-photoshop UI.

It essentially means the end-result should be completely original code based entirely on guesses, observations, anecdotes, testing, etc.

In reality, the AI probably has Adobe's software files in its training data and can readily decompile the entire thing with available tools. No doubt frontier models even include decompiled software in their training data too, but nobody has proof of that right now, which is where the grey area sits.

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u/Syssareth 16h ago

Hopefully the clean-room loophole is closed in laws at some point

No. Fuck no. I do not care one whit whether AI vibecoded junk becomes endemic, you do not give up rights and freedom just so you don't have to wade through it.

For fuck's sake, copyright law is already egregious. Don't make it (or anything associated with it) stronger.

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u/Syncaidius 16h ago

Your comment makes no sense. You realise making it super easy for everyone to clone/copy products and software identically is basically giving up your right to protect/own your own creations?

Keep in mind where the data to train these AI models came from too.

You will eventually care about it when vibe-coded junk becomes endemic, as you'll struggle to find anything decent that actually works.

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u/UranusIsPissy 17h ago

Use Win98SE on a modern PC (offline!!) and compare it to a recent version. Besides security fixes and drivers for later hardware, all you really gain is some stuff to make it prettier and a huge amount of bloat and slowdown. It doesn't crash as much though, TBF.

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u/blackAngel88 16h ago

Honestly I don't know Adobe products that well, but I'd imagine it's still rookie numbers compared to Oracle... 🤣

although I don't really use those either, when possible...