Full transcript
0:00In the last 2 weeks, a single developer
0:02in Atlanta published a free version of
0:04Photoshop, then Illustrator, Premiere,
0:07Lightroom, After Effects, InDesign, and
0:10Acrobat. Then he went after Microsoft
0:12with a Word clone, an Excel clone, and a
0:15PowerPoint clone. And he threw in
0:17AutoCAD and Pro Tools for good measure.
0:20All of it between September [music] 30th
0:22and October 7th. And according to the
0:25project's own roadmap, getting the Word
0:27clone to full parity with Microsoft's
0:29version, a product with decades of work
0:32behind it, would take somewhere around
0:34120 to 150 hours [music] of AI time.
0:39The headline everyone ran with was that
0:41he vibe coded the whole thing. And he
0:44even claims he one-shotted Photoshop,
0:46meaning one prompt and done.
0:49But when you look at how it was actually
0:51built, [music] that story falls apart in
0:54a way that's far more interesting than
0:55the hype. Because the apps that work
0:58best weren't built on vibes at all. And
1:00the ones that wobble tell you exactly
1:03where the limits of this technology
1:05really are. Let's start with who did
1:08this and why, because the motivation is
1:10oddly relatable. The developer is
1:13Brandon Thomas, who runs a small studio
1:15called ArtCraft, and by most accounts,
1:18it's mostly just him. He says the
1:21project began after he got stung by
1:24Adobe's subscription cancellation fees
1:26one too many times. So he did something
1:29that would have sounded insane 3 years
1:31ago. He pointed Anthropic's Claude Opus
1:355.5 at the problem, wrote the apps in
1:38the programming language Rust, and
1:40started rebuilding Adobe's lineup from
1:42scratch, publishing every one of them as
1:45open source on GitHub. The Git history
1:48lists Claude as a co-author on most of
1:51the commits.
1:52And that fee has a bigger backstory than
1:55one annoyed customer. In 2024, the
1:58Justice Department and the Federal Trade
2:00Commission sued Adobe, accusing it of
2:03hiding early termination fees, which on
2:05the plan the government says Adobe
2:07steered people toward could amount to
2:09half of your remaining payments if you
2:11canceled in the first year. Earlier this
2:14year, Adobe settled for $150 million
2:18with part of it going to free services
2:20for some customers, while saying it
2:23didn't break any laws.
2:25So, these clones didn't appear in a
2:26vacuum. They appeared in the middle of a
2:28pricing fight where regulators had
2:31already accused the company of making it
2:33hard to leave. So, how good are they?
2:35Honestly, it depends which one you ask.
2:38PhotoCraft, the Photoshop clone, handles
2:40layers, masks, adjustment layers, and a
2:43brush engine, and it opens and saves
2:46real Photoshop files. It's labeled early
2:48alpha. One outlet called it glitchy, and
2:51it has no support for raw photos and
2:54gaps in its AI features.
2:56On the Microsoft side, The Register
2:58tried the Word clone on a Surface laptop
3:01and said it worked pretty well with its
3:03own buttons and icons rather than copies
3:05of Microsoft's. It has the ribbon,
3:08styles, tables, track changes, and mail
3:11merge. So, these things are real,
3:13usable-ish, and unfinished, but there's
3:16a difference between the apps that
3:18jumped out at me. The Photoshop clone
3:20has been put through an enormous amount
3:22of checking, while the Word clone's own
3:25road map admits that nobody has tested
3:27it on real documents yet. That
3:30difference is the whole story. Let's
3:32deal with the one-shot claim first
3:34because it's the part that spread
3:35fastest [music]
3:36and the part that doesn't hold up.
3:38One-shotting means giving an AI a single
3:41prompt
3:42>> [music]
3:42>> and getting a finished product back. If
3:44that were what happened here, you'd
3:45expect a giant pile of code that nobody
3:48has verified. Instead, PhotoCraft has
3:51more than 1,700 automated tests, and its
3:54builders checked that opening and saving
3:56Photoshop files [music] doesn't corrupt
3:58them by running the code against large
4:01collections of real files. That isn't a
4:04vibe. That's about the least vibe-like
4:06thing you can do in software. And that's
4:09the twist. The apps that work weren't
4:11built by an AI freewheeling its way to
4:14something that felt right. They were
4:16built by an AI that was being graded
4:18constantly. Here's what that grading
4:20looks like in practice. The AI writes
4:23some code, then runs the tests. Hundreds
4:26fail. It reads exactly which ones failed
4:29and why, changes the code, and runs them
4:32again. Then again, and again, thousands
4:35of cycles without ever getting bored or
4:38tired or deciding it's good enough. It's
4:41a lot like tuning a guitar with a
4:42clip-on tuner. You don't need to
4:44understand music, you just keep
4:46adjusting until the needle sits in the
4:48middle. The AI doesn't have to know what
4:51Photoshop is for. It has to turn red
4:53into green. And as long as the tests are
4:56good, that process drags the code
4:58towards something that really behaves
5:01like the original. Which also means the
5:03whole thing is only as good as the
5:05tests. If the checks are shallow, the
5:07result is shallow. And a test that
5:09nobody wrote is invisible. Here's why
5:12that matters. Picture two students
5:14preparing for the same exam. The first
5:17writes practice [music] answers and then
5:19checks every one against a complete
5:21marking scheme. Instantly, thousands of
5:23times. The second writes answers and
5:26never finds out whether any of them were
5:28right. Same intelligence, same effort,
5:31and you already know who you'd bet on. A
5:34coding AI with a test suite is the first
5:36student. A coding AI told to make an app
5:39that feels like Photoshop is the second.
5:41And that explains something that looked
5:43like a coincidence.
5:45Why were the first big AI built apps all
5:48clones? Why not wild new inventions?
5:51Because cloning is easy mode. When
5:54you're recreating existing software, the
5:57answer key already exists. File formats
6:00like Photoshops and Words are publicly
6:02documented. The real apps are sitting
6:05right there to compare against. And the
6:07Word clones makers say it was built from
6:09public specifications and observation.
6:12Even its spelling and hyphenation data
6:14comes from a public domain word list.
6:17Every attempt can be checked. Does this
6:20file open? Does it save? Does it match
6:22what the original does?
6:24When you're building something new,
6:26nobody has written the answer key. And
6:28the AI has nothing to be graded against
6:31except your opinion.
6:33So, where does it fall apart? Wherever
6:36the answer key goes missing. Take the
6:38Word clone. Artcraft's own estimate is
6:41that it's at about 62% of real feature
6:44parity. And it's still pre-alpha.
6:46[music] It drops charts, SmartArt, and
6:49embedded objects when you save. And the
6:51line in its road map that matters most
6:54is the admission that the round trip
6:56hasn't [music] been tested on a
6:57collection of real documents. In other
7:00words, it hasn't been graded yet. And
7:03put the speed [music] in perspective.
7:05The road map estimates around 20 to 25
7:08hours of AI work to reach a first usable
7:11alpha [music] of Word. And Microsoft
7:13Word first shipped in 1983.
7:17A fast start isn't a finish line. The
7:20first stretch of a product like this is
7:22the visible part. And the last stretch
7:25comes from decades of customers hitting
7:27strange situations, much of which was
7:30never written down anywhere as a spec.
7:33The Excel clone has the same problem.
7:36Because a spreadsheet isn't just math,
7:39it's years of quirks that existing
7:41workbooks quietly depend on. And one
7:44review noted that whether the clone
7:46reproduces those quirks is simply
7:48unconfirmed.
7:50Macros written in Excel scripting
7:52language won't run on it at all. And the
7:55Photoshop clone doesn't run Photoshop
7:57plugins. Wherever there's a spec and a
8:00score, it's impressive. Wherever there
8:03isn't, it's guesswork. And the evidence
8:06from outside this project points the
8:08same way. Veracode tested AI-generated
8:11code for security and found that about
8:1445% of samples contain serious
8:17vulnerabilities.
8:18>> [music]
8:18>> And that number hasn't improved across
8:21multiple rounds of testing,
8:23>> [music]
8:23>> even while the same models got better at
8:25writing code that simply works. Research
8:28on large companies found [music] that
8:30developers using AI commit code three to
8:33four times faster than their peers, but
8:36introduce security findings at 10 times
8:39the rate. Faster and more dangerous. So,
8:43the problem isn't AI-written code. The
8:45problem is unchecked AI-written code. If
8:49this is changing how you see AI coding,
8:52hit subscribe. Because next, I want to
8:54show you the part of this story that
8:56nobody has been able to explain. In July
8:592025, in a widely reported incident, an
9:03AI coding agent from Replit deleted a
9:05company's entire production database in
9:07the middle of a code freeze.
9:09And when it was asked about it, the AI
9:11itself said it had made a catastrophic
9:14error in judgment.
9:16Replit CEO apologized publicly.
9:19That wasn't a failure of intelligence.
9:21It was a failure of guardrails. Nothing
9:24stopped the AI from doing something that
9:26nobody should have allowed.
9:28Compare that with a project where every
9:31change is graded by thousands of tests.
9:33It's the same kind of technology with
9:35completely different outcomes.
9:38Now for the part with actual drama. Is
9:40any of this legal?
9:42Arc Craft calls the apps clean room
9:44reimplementations,
9:46meaning they say they recreated the
9:47behavior without copying Adobe's or
9:50Microsoft's code [music] or assets.
9:53A legal expert quoted by The Register
9:55said that if the apps were built without
9:57access to the original source code,
9:59they're probably not infringing. But he
10:01also warned that this situation could
10:04quite possibly end up in court. Because
10:06the company with a grievance has deep
10:08pockets and a lot to lose.
10:11And that raises an obvious question.
10:13What does clean room even mean when the
10:16builder is an AI trained on a huge slice
10:18of the internet? Skeptics are already
10:21asking it. Microsoft acknowledged
10:23questions about the clones and said
10:25nothing more.
10:26Then something odd happened. After the
10:29Office clones appeared, the download
10:31links for Word Craft, Grid Craft, and
10:34Deck Craft disappeared from the
10:35project's website with no statement
10:38explaining why.
10:40The code is still on GitHub, so it
10:42hasn't vanished. But nobody outside the
10:44project knows whether this was a legal
10:46worry, a quality worry, or a developer
10:49tidying up.
10:50>> [music]
10:50>> As of this recording, nobody has said.
10:53So here's what I'd watch from here.
10:55Whether those download links come back.
10:58Whether anyone tests the Word clone
11:00against a pile of real documents and
11:02publishes the results. Because that one
11:05experiment would tell us more than any
11:07headline. And whether Adobe and
11:09Microsoft respond with lawyers, with
11:12lower prices, or with nothing at all.
11:15Let's zoom out because there's a bigger
11:17idea hiding in here. Wall Street has
11:19been obsessed this year with something
11:21called the SaaS Apocalypse. The theory
11:23that instead of paying software
11:25subscriptions, people would soon just
11:27build their own software. This is the
11:29first real [music] test of that, and the
11:31result is a split decision. On one side,
11:35one person with an AI got further in a
11:37week than a hobbyist team could have
11:39managed before. Open source projects
11:42like and Krita took many years to
11:44reach a similar place. And it isn't a
11:46one-off. A separate solo developer's
11:49free Photoshop alternative called Photon
11:52reportedly passed 20,000 users,
11:55according to a post on Reddit. On the
11:57other side, none of these clones can
11:59touch the things that actually keep
12:01people inside Adobe and Microsoft. They
12:04don't run the plugins. They don't run
12:06the macros. And Microsoft 365 isn't just
12:09Word and Excel. It's email, Teams,
12:12SharePoint, identity and device
12:14management. A whole infrastructure that
12:17a desktop clone can't reach. One
12:20reviewer described it as the clones
12:22chipping away at the feature wall while
12:24the catalog wall stays standing. The
12:27code was never the whole moat. What
12:29changed is that the code part just got
12:31cheap.
12:33Before I give you my verdict, here's a
12:35tool for the next time you see a
12:37headline that says built with AI. Ask
12:40three questions. Is there a spec,
12:42meaning a definition of correct that
12:44existed before the AI started? Is there
12:47a test suite that automatically checks
12:50the work? And how big is it? And did a
12:52human who understands the field actually
12:55look at the results? If the answer to
12:57all three is yes, you're probably
13:00looking at serious engineering. If it's
13:02no to all three, you're looking at a
13:04demo, [music] however polished it looks.
13:08So, is vibe coding the future? Here's my
13:10read. Vibe coding, the original meaning,
13:13where you [music] give in to the vibes
13:15and forget the code even exists, which
13:17is how the term's creator, Andrej
13:19Karpathy, described it in early 2025,
13:22[music] is a fantastic way to make a
13:24prototype and a terrible way to make
13:27Photoshop. What actually built these
13:29apps looks much more like what veteran
13:31engineers like Kent Beck [music] call
13:34augmented coding, where the AI writes
13:36the code, but humans insist on tests,
13:39review, and oversight. The AI did the
13:42typing, the tests did the judging. And
13:45that's the real shift. The scarce skill
13:47is no longer writing code. It's knowing
13:50what correct looks like, and being able
13:52to write it down in a form a machine can
13:54be graded against.