“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.
A bold AI developer, Brandon Thomas, is challenging Adobe's Creative Suite with open-source alternatives, claiming to achieve near-perfect fidelity through AI-powered reverse engineering. Artcraft, Thomas's initiative, initially launched as an AI for artists to edit AI-crafted images and videos, has now expanded into a suite of seven open-source applications.
These apps replicate the user interface and tools of Adobe's well-known software, including Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere, Lightroom, After Effects, InDesign, and Acrobat Pro. Thomas used Anthropic's Claude Opus 5.5 to create clean-room replacements for Adobe's closed-source software in Rust, complete with WebAssembly versions for browser use.
Despite the current shortcomings noted by commenters, Thomas is confident that the software in its early alpha stage will soon match Adobe's functionality.
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