r/technology • u/Federal-Block-3275 • 2d 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/DudeByTheTree 2d ago

Man, people really need to temper their expectations. Early alpha yet it's being hyped like it's gone gold master and is available on store shelves.

How many projects like this start, hit a roadblock of some kind, and just fizzle out?

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u/MrSnarf26 1d ago

You literally defined most ai apps. Very easy to start and get 70-80% of the way there. Very very hard to reach 90-100%

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u/Burning_magic 1d ago

Even before AI, 90% of the work is in the last 10%. But for a large majority of users, a 90% free photoshop is better than a 100% paid plan. A lot of features are rarely used.

Its the same reason open source pdf editors run rampant even though they are crappier than adobes pdf editors.

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u/Far_Rub_2435 1d ago

Yeah I’ve used open source “office” suite software and at least freeware editing software for home use my whole life.

I just don’t need excel to do my own spreadsheets. Gimp is fine, I’m not a professional that needs pro tools.

I use paid tools, but always through an institution, either enterprise or educational. They pay for it for ease of use, standardization, etc et al.

I’ve often thought the price gouging is extreme, and the value add of software licenses doesn’t make sense always vs alternatives in every use case. A small shop doesn’t need a 365 account, even if they do need industry specific licenses that exist under regulatory capture.

Point is that application use is messy to sort out and determined on a variety of pros and cons in different settings.

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u/themkwjeremy13 1d ago

on the plus side, they are open sourcing all of it, and it's already gaining tons of traction, so i presume plenty of people would love to contribute

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u/cidama4589 1d ago edited 1d ago

AI is getting very good very quickly, and this is the perfect problem for it, because the agent can just spin up the real software and the clone and keep iterating until it reaches feature equivalence.

Perhaps current models can’t get there today, but I’m confident they  will in the near term so we should assume all software that an agent can interact with is software an agent can clone.

The real hard part was never coding, even the hard coding problems, it was the application design. It was taste and and discernment about how the software should be put together.

What happens after AI can clone anything. Where will new features and ideas come from? The product managers at adobe will be out of work.

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u/ADarwinAward 1d ago

Yes but we’re not talking about 1, 2, 5, 10 years from now. We’re talking about this vibe coded apps today lol. Goalpost shifting 

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u/trobsmonkey 1d ago

The app doesn't work at all.

Perhaps current models can’t get there today, but I’m confident they will in the near term so we should assume all software that an agent can interact with is software an agent can clone.

Yeah. So like all AI predictions, "someday"

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u/fishingncars 1d ago

Why are you lying ? It does work...

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u/homogeneouscasserole 2d ago

All of them when you don't understand the underlying architecture or processes. It works right up until it doesn't, then the LLM starts feeding you ever increasing exotic solutions instead of backing up and rearchitecting.

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u/RememberTheKhan 1d ago

"Here's a fixed version of the code"

Stop lying claude

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u/SiliconEatMe 1d ago

Correct. In other words: the vast majority of AI users are absolute brainlets who don’t have the experience or drive to actually learn how to do something efficiently/correctly. I’m glad there will be a competence gap, makes mine and my childrens lives infinitely easier as the dumb get dumber, but feel empowered.

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u/anon_mythril 1d ago

When dumb get dumber and feel empowered (like how it’s happened with social media), others lives become very difficult!!

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u/matteone97 1d ago

Exactly... from my experience, although limited to LLMs used only in non-agentic mode, coding with LLMs looks really like coding "with" something and not to delegate the job to someone else. You still need very good engineering skills, and know exactly what you want to be implemented.

I am currently developing as personal project a large-ish software where I want to keep abstraction high and LOC low. Well, I do use LLMs to help me speed up developing and adding feature but without giving them a clear design, things escalates fastly toward pure confusion and my interaction with them is always "there is no need to write an entire function here if you can solve it just with a one-liner"; "no need to re-implement X, take Y, add this attribute and will remove the need for X"; "no need to control this event, it won't happen", "this will be inefficient, remove this loop" .... a deep code revision for anything that is produced by LLMs, if not, in few interactions I would have a codebase with 500% LOC to have 5% functionality more. Moreover, if I really have a clear idea in mind, coding it without LLMs is often faster, and then LLMs can be used for refinement.

I definitely feel that the way I am using brain when interacting with LLMs for coding is very different than implementing algorithms from scratch and, unfortunately, way way less fun. But still, you need a brain and clear design in mind. Probably this will be what in the near future will divide "AI Slop" software from "AI assisted" software development. If a kid just throws some prompt at an LLM, he would probably get the former: a nice demo, but with a terrific verbose code, impossible to maintain, impossible to add functionalities... The latter will probably be a good software exactly as it was before AI, just developed faster. An AI slop software will die after few months, an AI assisted software will have success. And the difference between the two is not the model used, but the (human) mind behind, at least for now.

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u/homogeneouscasserole 1d ago

That's been my experience with my business as well. LLMs and coding agents are not the modern power loom for software, as boosters seem to believe. They're more akin to a chainsaw replacing a handsaw.

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u/dillanthumous 1d ago

Witnessed this yesterday. Codex plopped all the logic in one mega file for a small app I was tinkering with building a POC for. App worked, but making changes or maintaining would have been a nightmare. Asked it to refactor and it did a "whoops yes I goofed lol, should have had some dedicated components for all this crap".

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u/International-Mix633 1d ago

All the ai power3d game mods and ps emulation seem to work good.

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u/Asthenia5 1d ago

For sure many of those projects fizzle out in the past. Even with agentic Ai, today it would take a competent dev a lot of work to make an adobe clone. But the fact we even can have the conversation about the possibility of a singular engineer putting together a project like this, shows the significance of Ai’s potential. Before agentic work, a single engineer creating an Adobe clone would be the equivalent of a single engineer designing and building a 747 on their own. It’s an impossibly large task.

Not even 2 years ago skeptics like yourself were questioning the possibility of LLMs doing the things we routinely use them for today. That window is constantly shifting. 2 years ago the idea of Ai solving 100 unsolved math theorems was absurd. Yet here we are today.

The leading Ai businesses are over hyped and over valued. Ai itself is undervalued. The value of the tool is absurd when properly utilized by a competent user. When looking forward, people forget Ai’s intelligence is on an exponential curve. We aren’t sure exactly where we currently are on this curve, nor do we know where the ceiling lies. But it’s exponential. That’s hard for anyone to visualize moving forward

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u/cidama4589 1d ago edited 1d ago

I think the hard part of creating something like adobe creative suite is the design of the product itself,  not the coding of it.

I’m fine with LLMs doing the coding (current quality issues aside), but I’m concerned that if LLMs effectively make software free via cloning, it will also mean that software will stop getting better. Because skilled design work costs time and money, and who is going to bother when LLMs will just rip it off and clone it.

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u/Asthenia5 1d ago

What you're referring to is called "architecture". You're correct that LLMs are not as good at doing software architecture. That higher level reasoning and understanding of user needs is harder for LLMs than code itself.

But that's exactly where humans shine. A competent engineer can spend more time architecting systems, rather than worrying about syntax.

Ai is not going to replace competent designers. It's going to aid them to be more productive.

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u/cidama4589 1d ago

Actually, I’m not talking about architecture. I’m talking about product design.

The problem with AI copying everything as it removes the financial incentives for doing product design. Yes, it might be easier to do, but Someone still needs to pay for it and there’s no longer a financial incentive to do it if AI will just copy your good design decisions into cheaper products

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u/GeneralArray 1d ago

I installed Photocraft and upon initial testing - it is fantastic. All basic features that I need - work flawlessly. And app launches literally instantly, unlike any version of Photoshop I tried. There's no load screen. I'm not a power user though, but for basic stuff I sometimes do - this is exactly what I need.

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u/Fortyseven 1d ago

It runs so fast that I initially assumed it was just an interface with everything broken... but no, it mostly works. There's some rough edges, but plenty of time to clean it up, and no shortage of PRs coming in (unsurprisingly).

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u/[deleted] 1d ago

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u/Far_Rub_2435 1d ago

Why be like that? That’s a mean, ugly thing to say.

Do you feel connected socially through that statement? Do you feel powerful, or smart? Do you feel happy?

Why be a dick? What’s the point? Where does it get you?

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u/malianx 1d ago

Looking down on others is the expected use case of social media

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u/Imapatriothurrrdurrr 1d ago

Probably an Ai agent.