Someone was tired of paying for Adobe products, so they used AI to make their own alternatives

We're getting to an interesting point in AI development where they can code up an app pretty quickly. Whether or not the app is any good is another story, but we're definitely turning around some kind of corner with AI development.

Well, one person has bravely decided to take on Adobe at their own game with an entire suite of software coded up with the help of AI, and it's an interesting insight into what the future may hold.

Someone used AI to recreate Adobe's products for free

We'll have to see if this kind of development is actually feasible

Over on the SaaS subreddit, user ai_art_is_art posted a thread announcing seven apps created with the help of Opus 5.5. They don't go into detail about how much work they put in themselves or whether the project was entirely vibe-coded; either way, they've announced open-source, Rust-based versions of Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere, Lightroom, After Effects, InDesign, and Acrobat Pro.

The biggest issue with projects like these is that maintainers who use AI to make apps tend to upload it and then move on to something else. However, the original poster claims they won't do that, saying they're a "15-year industry veteran" who has "used Rust extensively for about a decade" and claims to know "how to build and maintain large-scale Rust projects."

They then make some pretty bold claims for the future of this project:

So... is the suite any good? It's hard to tell for sure right now; it'll likely need some more time to mature. If the original poster stands by their claim, they'll quickly iron out any bugs and issues found. If they do, we'll truly have something amazing on our hands.

But even if this project ends up as another abandoned vibe-coded venture, it shows how far AI coding has come. Businesses have been keen to replace workers with AI to save money, but now we're seeing people build free alternatives to proprietary tools, with an open-source base anyone can contribute to and edit.

We're either on the cusp of people using AI to make seriously huge strides in the open-source scene and reduce the need for proprietary apps, or we're about to see a lot more vibe-coded slop; only time will tell.