r/singularity • u/Unique_Ad_330 • 1h ago
Discussion Why is barely anyone talking anout the guy who vibe coded Adobe's whole billion-dollar industry product collection?
It's cool, insane and deeply scary news to me, because it shows the crack in the matrix that is shattering.
It's not about whether what he did is illegal/legal, it's about what that means for every software industry out there.
It's just such uncertain crazy times were living in and I might ask for a room at Zuckerbergs bunker.
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u/Creative-Ganache1086 59m ago
They’re not even close. Adobe-related Freeware alternatives (even living in the browser) has been out for years with way more capability than what that user vibecoded. And the biggest advantage of Photoshop is the AI-powered editing features that benefited from million-dollar worth of training data something vibecoding will never provide, as for the beta testing that’s a completely different department where vibecoded stuff fall short. Generalized reliability or cross-compatibility isn’t something that can be thoroughly checked or tested on just one machine/OS.
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u/Poupulino 51m ago
I don't agree, I've used PhotoCraft and it's basically 60-70% up there with Photoshop, that remaining 30% will be achieved within the next year.
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u/Ok_Somewhere3828 32m ago
The question is whether vibe coded copies will be picked up at the enterprise level. My guess is not, because of data and security concerns.
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u/Elctsuptb 28m ago
They don't need to be "picked up", because anyone else is also able to use the same AI models to create whatever software they want, or at least will be able to very soon.
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u/lucellent 45m ago
All the other mentioned alternatives already do 60-70% maybe more. The remaining ones are the hardest and the stuff that people care about that will make them switch. Otherwise for now they remain AI slop.
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u/Cameronalloneword 21m ago
I see it everywhere and I absolutely love it. Adobe is pure trash and I hope they suffer from their scams.
If ASI goes rogue though you don't really think a bunker will protect anybody do you? That'd be like a human hunting a baby monkey and the monkey covers its eyes.
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u/phpHater0 53m ago
Because those vibe coded versions are ass and no sane person would use them for serious work. Also, free adobe alternatives have existed for ages, for example photopea.
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u/NotWantedForAnything 27m ago
I've had a look at the Photoshop and Illustrator versions and they seem pretty good. Same familiar feel I've learnt with Adobe products so no need to re-learn how to do things. There are some small things to fix but given the pace of development and that they're open source and free for anyone to use, the small issues should be sorted out quickly.
I found a few minor annoyance with VectorCraft like not having shortcut keys for the menus, not showing a warning when the file save failed. After a short time telling Codex the fixes, the issues were sorted out.
I'm not sure why so many people (bots?) on Reddit are negative. Unlike programs like Inkscape, these have the features, look and usability as Adobe products which makes them much better than other programs. Also a big upgrade from Adobe because they run much faster.
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u/HauntedHouseMusic 7m ago
Honestly I wouldn’t touch them today…. But in two months they will probably be good.
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u/Traditional-Chip8339 ▪️AI 2027 was right, bruh..... 59m ago
It's not yet clear if people will switch to a vibe coded version. A big part of software maintenance is ongoing updates so not sure if the SaaS model is totally dead although some of the pricing power is for sure gonzo.
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u/emb1ues 52m ago
Extrapolate bitch. Everyone will be using their own software. Except for social apps (instagram) and IRL services (uber).
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u/mantrakid 42m ago
People won’t pay for apps they will pay for access to other people. Pay to belong to a community… it’s the only thing I can think of that keeps us valuable once we’re not needed for a supply chain economy. Well it’ll still be an economy but based on buying connection. Art will be the ONLY physical proof of those true connections. That may be delusional but im telling myself its possible to keep myself sane as i hang on by my fingernails. 😦
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u/WaterWeedDuneHair69 44m ago
lol. Not at the enterprise level. You think corporations are gonna want to switch to a vibe coded, one developer application when the established player has the full backing, knowledge, engineering, and money to follow through on their contracts, service agreements, and future road map, etc.
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u/monsieurpooh 28m ago
I have an even weirder prediction (extrapolating further) there will be no code at all and everyone's "OS" will just be able to generate all the pixels for everything and maintain a coherent internal state with what it's showing you and why: https://blog.maxloh.com/2025/11/prediction-most-software-wont-run-on.html
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u/Waypoint101 47m ago
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u/Brilliant_Pie_1924 42m ago
Web 3 was the shitty futur from 2018. It's dead, let it rest
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u/Waypoint101 41m ago
Its not really dead yet, only the shitty projects are dying including bitcoin and ethereum.
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u/Traditional-Chip8339 ▪️AI 2027 was right, bruh..... 47m ago
Maybe, maybe not. I think there will be a core of enterprise SaaS like Oracle or Salesforce that will have to be pried from the cold dead hand of enterprises and maybe adobe makes it out alive. Leopold Aschenbrenner has been mostly right until he got the timing wrong and shorted Adobe there are still Roman era bridges in use in Europe even though much better technology is around.
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u/Kangaroo197 56m ago
Adobe is more about the support contracts than the actual software products.
Affinity is already free and can do 90% of what most individual users need. Same for most MS Office products. Free versions which cover most uses have been available for years.
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u/bloodrider1914 Pro-technology 31m ago
Dude I'm a photographer, I'm hearing SO FUCKING MUCH about it.
I've tested out the lightcraft app (the clone of Lightroom), and it's not ready for use just yet. The most impressive thing about the apps is their interface and how well they march up to the Adobe suite, but the processing engine needs some work to say the least.
Who knows what the legal response will be at this point. There's no crime in the US for copying the look or feel of software.
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u/no-nonsenseid 25m ago
Instead of this slop, I would want the free alternatives like photopea to up their game with AI assistance
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u/DrinkAgreeable962 6m ago
Because "coding" was never the biggest problem in all of this. Even if you can vibe code anything in a day or two there are certain things missing:
- trust
- marketing
- documentation (someone who actually understands the whole app)
- support
The last one is actually most important for any medium-big company. They prefer to pay someone to take care about the problems, fix bugs and help out if something is wrong, rather than hold cerain amount of IT guys, recruit them etc. just to keep them available in case something breaks.
It will change though, once we have 100% automated SWE Agents. Not coding agents which require someone navigating them (we have that now, already). I mean real fully automated software engineers who can just go on and understand any project in a seconds, design new ones, fix existing issues and so on. We're still very far from that (which still means we can get there within a year or two).
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u/ProxyLumina 57m ago
First let's address the thing that it is not (just) vibe coding, it is reverse engineering.
Reverse engineering is something astonishing difficult to do in a binary file, and as this is accomplished with AI it reminds us how far AI has come.
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u/Redditing-Dutchman 56m ago
I thought it was a clean room design approach? Aka made from scratch.
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u/PresentationOld605 23m ago
Its easier than most people think, just tedious and time-consuming. With proper tools , the binary has been decompiled even before AI came to the masses, unless someone has encrypt the binary before.
To me, the fact that it is a clean room design done within weeks/months in that scale is way more impressive.
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u/wentwj 27m ago
it’s not so much that AI made reverse engineering technically possible. It’s generally using tools that have existed since before LLMs. But LLMs have made these tools more accessible to more people and much easier to use for those with even a small amount of knowledge.
With that said to my knowledge I don’t think these adobe apps were reverse engineered, but maybe I’m wrong
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u/Appropriate_Row5213 53m ago
There have been alternatives since decades. This is being talked about as this is vibecoded. Otherwise its quality is shit.
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u/SmurfeeKnife 53m ago
Because AI has not reached instant absolute security and legal trust worthy yet for vibe coded apps. If we can spin up fully worthy apps almost effortlessly, thats when corporation really collapse. You can ignore if there's bare bugs, because even big software have them. Big money comes from enterprises circulating cashflow around each other.
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u/emteedub 41m ago
time for socialism. I always like to drop this because the capitalists get all mad - but it's like bro, how the hell do you square capitalism when AI is the great equalizer. Bougie elites can't masquerade as the smartest anymore, and no one has a moat/competitive edge anymore. Total inversion calls for really switching gears and not denying the reality of it all.
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u/Notfriendly123 48m ago
It takes a whole lot to make something useful, anybody can make a “photoshop clone” but can they make a photoshop killer? That’s the real problem with vibe coded software, you need a user to tell you it’s better and if it’s not then there was no point
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u/DeviceCertain7226 ▪️Immortality-2200 | FDVR-2300 47m ago
Big companies are not using it, they’re staying on adobe.
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u/TimotheusIV 46m ago
It’s a cool exercise and flex, but little more.
People use Adobe software for far more than ‘just’ editing photos and videos. It’s about the support network, AI integrated tools, the reliability and cross-compatibility. Freeware or cheap alternatives have been around for decades and never really gained traction in any serious industry.
That said, it is still impressive.
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u/lucellent 46m ago
The only people who praise them are the ones who didn't try them. They're hot pile of garbage, purely for hype.
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u/Spiritual-Nail-2641 33m ago
It is impressive, but ...
Adobe's empire is tied to big enterprises. These enterprises don't change their vendors or tech stack overnight. Their vetting processes alone can take months. Until this vibe-coded collection is properly maintained by the creator and adopted by hundreds of thousands of creative professionals worldwide, it won't make a dent in Adobe's dominance.
Consider Canva for a second. It is quite easy to learn and use, affordable, and maintained by a big team. More importantly, it gets the job done. Yet, its enterprise adoption is nowhere close to Adobe's.
The same goes for other software products and services. The money is in enterprise contracts. As revolutionary as vibe-coded apps may seem, they have a long way to go when it comes to stealing money from established players.
Funny. My feed is flooded with this story. Anyway, apparently the guy has also released MS Office alternatives. Again, impressive at first sight, but shipping products after products, without improving the existing ones, doesn't inspire confidence in their longevity. Adobe will just wait out the news cycle and go back to collecting their bags of sweet enterprise money.
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u/SavingsDimensions74 2m ago
It poses a quite interesting geopolitical question.
One of the big advantages the US has is having the rest of the developed world depending on US products.
This dependency turns out to have been a poor decision. A very significant point of weakness, from excel to nuclear launch codes.
Being able to reverse engineer whatever binaries is quite the leap - and it may reduce the West’s dependence on America.
Strange days.
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u/iBukkake 1m ago
Having watched the LTT video on these PS dupes, I don't think Adobe needs to be quaking in their boots just yet but the long term outlook for the CS package doesn't look great.
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u/mithrilsoft 54m ago
He didn't really do that. The tools are far from what Adobe has. Lots of Adobe alternatives exist, but Adobe hasn't gone anywhere. This is mostly hype. Back to GIMP, Affinity, and Krita for me.
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u/Creative-Trouble3473 23m ago
It’s insane and scary that people believe you can just vibe code software like this. No, you can’t.
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u/Revolutionalredstone 33m ago
Kids have been doing this for themselves and their friends for many years.
The 16 yo in his basement with the best tech was never ever a joke.
Now it's just a prompt or two away, enjoy.
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u/No_Development6032 55m ago
It’s like protein folding, it’s cool and all, ultimately doesn’t do anything
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u/Redditing-Dutchman 53m ago
It’s not really illegal because alternatives were always allowed as long as the specific names (photoshop etc) are not used and no specific code was copied.
Photo Pea (photoshop in your browser) has existed for years.
But I hope that Adobe, which has been pretty arrogant lately and uses a lot of ‘dark patterns’ to make cancelling your subscription harder gets put down a notch. Wouldn’t hurt the industry at least.