“Software is over”: Bold AI developer takes aim at Adobe with open source clones
Opus-built Creative Cloud alternatives are ambitious, free, and nowhere near finished.
TL;DR
- Developer Brandon Thomas is creating open-source alternatives to Adobe's Creative Suite using AI-powered reverse engineering.
- The new suite includes apps mimicking Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere, Lightroom, After Effects, InDesign, and Acrobat Pro.
- Thomas used Anthropic's Claude Opus 5.5 to build 'clean-room replacements' in Rust, with WebAssembly versions available.
- The project aims to offer free alternatives to Adobe's expensive software, inspired by frustration with 'dark patterns'.
- Development is funded by selling token-based access to the Artcraft visual AI model and IDE.
- Thomas predicts achieving feature parity with Adobe's software within months.
- He envisions AI enabling developers to create open-source versions of popular paid software, 'taking back the internet'.