"Software Is Over": AI Developer Releases Free Adobe Clones — Shocking the SaaS Industry
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In early October 2026, a software developer made a bold declaration: "Software is over." Those words came from Brandon Thomas, a developer with 15 years of experience. Using AI, he built free clones of all of Adobe's major products.
He replicated industry-standard tools like Photoshop and Premiere — entirely on his own, in just a matter of weeks. All he used was Anthropic's AI model "Claude Opus 5.5" and the programming language Rust.
This move has sent shockwaves through creators around the world. It means they may soon be able to use completely free, open-source tools instead of Adobe Creative Cloud, which costs upward of $40 per month.
What Thomas built is a project called "ArtCraft Crafting Apps" — seven apps corresponding to seven Adobe products.
The apps already released are: PhotoCraft (Photoshop alternative), VectorCraft (Illustrator alternative), FilmCraft (Premiere alternative), LightCraft (Lightroom alternative), EffectCraft (After Effects alternative), DesignCraft (InDesign alternative), and PrintCraft (Acrobat Pro alternative).
PhotoCraft and PrintCraft have been released as working "Early alpha" versions. The remaining five are currently "In development."
PhotoCraft already features 34 tools, 27 blend modes, layer support, and masking capabilities. It can even open Adobe's .psd files — meaning migration from Photoshop to PhotoCraft is straightforward.
All of these apps run on Windows, macOS, and Linux. The ability to run on Linux, which Adobe does not officially support, is a notable advantage.
Why did Thomas start this project? The motivation was personal frustration. "Adobe charged me cancellation fees multiple times. I've hated them ever since," Thomas has said.
Canceling an Adobe subscription is complicated. If you cancel an annual plan midway through, you can be charged up to 50% of the remaining monthly fees. On top of that, this information was buried in hard-to-find places at the time of sign-up.
The issue has since reached a legal resolution. In 2024, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) sued Adobe. Then in March 2026, Adobe agreed to a $150 million settlement.
Half of the settlement ($75 million) goes to the Department of Justice, and the other half is paid to affected customers in the form of free services. Thomas announced his project shortly after news of the settlement spread.
Once upon a time, building professional software like Photoshop required large teams and years of development. AI has upended that assumption.
Claude Opus 5.5, which Thomas used, is an AI model released in September 2026. It excels at code generation, debugging, and refactoring (rewriting programs).
In real-world tests, it audited and revised 200,000 lines of code in under three hours — a task that took more than 20 hours with the previous version, Opus 5. That represents nearly a sevenfold improvement in speed.
In another test, it translated the well-known software HAProxy from C to Rust in 9.5 hours. The translated program passed nearly all of the original test suite.
In other words, AI doesn't just write code — it can understand how existing software works and reproduce it in a different language. This capability is what makes "cloning professional software" possible.
That said, ArtCraft's apps are not finished products. PhotoCraft and PrintCraft are in the "Early alpha" stage of development.
An alpha version means basic functionality works, but there are many bugs and not all features are in place. Using it for real professional work would carry significant risk.
Even so, Thomas is confident. He has promised to "achieve 100% of Adobe's core functionality within one month." With AI assistance, this ambitious goal may not be out of reach.
All the apps are released as open source — meaning anyone can view the code and improve it. If developers around the world collaborate, the pace of development could accelerate even further.
Thomas is not just an amateur developer. His career is impressive.
He worked as a software engineer at payment giant Square, building payment systems that processed billions of dollars a day. He also has experience in robotics and optical automation.
He was also the CEO of a startup called Storyteller.ai and has roughly a decade of experience as a Rust specialist.
In short, a highly skilled veteran developer is taking on Adobe in earnest — with the help of AI. This is no mere hobby project.
The impact this project could have on the industry is immeasurable. The SaaS (Software as a Service, subscription-based software) business model itself is being shaken.
Traditionally, developing professional software required enormous investment. That's why subscription revenue was necessary. Users had no alternative but to pay, because there were no real alternatives.
But AI has changed the game. A single developer can now build software that rivals a major corporation's product in a matter of weeks.
This can be called the "democratization of software." When expensive tools become free, the barrier to entry for creators drops. More people around the world will be able to produce professional-quality work.
Legal questions, however, remain. The ArtCraft apps were built by reverse engineering Adobe's software.
Thomas claims to have used a "clean room" approach — a method where you don't directly copy the original program's code, but instead study its functionality and rewrite it from scratch.
Still, the possibility of Adobe taking legal action is not zero. Similarities in user interface (screen design) and compatibility with the .psd file format could become points of contention.
On the other hand, the open-source community tends to support such challenges. If Adobe were to file a lawsuit, it would create a narrative of a large corporation versus an individual developer — potentially triggering a public backlash.
There are many Adobe Creative Cloud users in Japan as well. For freelance designers and video creators, spending upward of $40 per month is no small matter.
If ArtCraft genuinely reaches practical usability, Japanese creators will gain a real alternative. This is especially good news for students and up-and-coming creators who have limited budgets.
That said, compatibility is critical in professional settings. If clients or team members are exchanging files in Adobe formats, a complete migration may be difficult.
Still, for personal projects or learning purposes, it should be more than sufficient. Since it's open source, volunteers may also step up to create Japanese-language versions or localizations.
This project is a real-world example of how AI is transforming software development. Similar movements will likely emerge in other fields before long.
For instance, clones of Microsoft Office or Autodesk products may appear. Expensive enterprise software won't be exempt either.
At the same time, AI-generated code carries risks — including the potential for security vulnerabilities to slip in, or issues with licensing violations against existing software.
Even so, technological progress does not stop. Thomas's words — "Software is over" — may not be an exaggeration. At the very least, the traditional high-cost subscription model is entering a major turning point.
This article is a cross-post from AI Friends.
