“Software is over”: a developer ships AI-built open source clones of Adobe

Ars Technica profiles a developer taking aim at Adobe and its subscription-based Creative Cloud suite. His verdict on the paid-software industry is blunt: “Software is over.”

In place of expensive editors he offers his own alternatives — open and free. What makes them notable is how they come to be: the heavy lifting of writing code is handed to the Opus AI model, while the human acts more as a director setting the tasks.

The ambition is real. If professional tools like photo editors and other Creative Cloud apps can be reproduced by a neural network, then the very premise of closed commercial software starts to look shaky — hence the loud claim that programs as we know them are finished.

There is, however, a mundane catch: the clones are far from ready. Ars Technica is candid that the projects are rough and nowhere near a full replacement for Creative Cloud. So the “software is over” line reads more like a manifesto than a statement of fact.

Still, the experiment is telling. It shows how readily today's AI assistants will take on work that not long ago demanded teams of engineers and years of effort — and how quickly enthusiasts are willing to test those capabilities against the industry's biggest names.

Source: Ars Technica