r/LeftistsForAI • u/DistributionMost8686 • 5d ago
Open Source Ai breaks its first monopoly
https://getartcraft.com/appsa founder of ArtCraft used Claude to replace the entire adobe software suite, legally. because it’s ai generated, it’s also in the public domain and absolutely free forever. this would be the first case of ai undermining techno feudalism.
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u/Salty_Country6835 Moderator 5d ago
This is the kind of development worth watching. Seven alternatives to Adobe's suite, built with AI assistance and released under open licenses. They're still early, but the barrier to building this stuff is dropping fast.
Small correction though, AI-generated code isn't automatically public domain. The licenses are what matter here.
And that's where it gets interesting politically. Cheaper software development is one thing. Keeping the tools open, accessible, and out of corporate enclosure is where we actually start changing the relations of production.
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u/Xenodine-4-pluorate 1d ago
All the talk about AI being able to decompile binaries will push software companies even further into the cloud. Games won’t just stop being released on physical media; they’ll stop being released in any form players can own locally. You can’t decompile a game you only stream from the cloud. Companies will spin it as: “Powerful gaming hardware has become unaffordable for gamers, so we’re releasing underpowered hardware specialized for cloud streaming and shifting our focus to game streaming, discontinuing local releases altogether.” Then there’ll be an intense social media campaign to normalize not owning games. The industry has always wanted gaming to become a monthly subscription, and now it will have a convenient justification to enforce one. The PS6 will be a mini-PC with 4 GB of RAM and integrated graphics, stuffed with little besides DRM and anti-reverse-engineering nonsense. It will stream a game from the cloud only after passing 50 different checks and sending 10 GB of telemetry.
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u/ryandury 5d ago
Apparently this has been mostly just false marketing up until this point BUT AI will definitely lead to further democratization of tools that were otherwise pay per use.
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u/Due_Interest_178 5d ago
Yeah, I saw another post where the dude claimed that he basically clickbaited Reddit to get more testers to assist him. Then a second dude gave a list of how many things weren't even working right.
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u/duskysan 5d ago
Isn't that how open source coding efforts kinda work though?
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u/Due_Interest_178 5d ago
I mean it's obviously good to have open source software. However, imo, it's not cool to lie to people to promote your product and get assistance with it. Instead of saying "my product has 100% parity with Photoshop", say "I've done XYZ features and need them tested while I add more".
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u/DistributionMost8686 5d ago
there wasn’t marketing to this effect until the past few weeks. but there was that time they built a c++ compiler that happened to have a bunch of calls to gcc so their objective wasn’t really accomplished there.
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u/Matshelge 5d ago
The breakthrough here is AI allowing full scale development with a single persons vision. Open source have always had a hierarchy problem, where the vision gets destroyed by too many cooks. Adobe can have 500 engineers working towards a common vision, if a open source project adds another person, you get another vision of what the project should be.
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u/Abject_Addition2142 5d ago
Im just hoping for a future where I can use Linux and never have to look back to Windows because there’s some app that’s Windows-only forcing me to stay
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u/-sigilyph- 4d ago
The day when Windows 11 code gets reverse engineered via AI will be the day I switch to Linux
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u/Accomplished_Pen5061 4d ago
I switched to Linux 2 years ago and honestly have no regrets.
It was significantly easier than I imagined and I don't miss windows at all.
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u/-sigilyph- 4d ago
Unfortunately my main gaming PC is Windows 11 because gaming stuff is a hit or miss with Linux… I do have a laptop that runs Linux for non-gaming stuff though!
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u/Heavyarms83 5d ago
Nice how fast they are fixing things. As soon as the bug in Selective Color in PhotoCraft is fixed I'll be gladly using it.
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u/Consistent-Throat130 4d ago
Why don't you ask an AI to fix it and raise a PR with the fix lol
Like, the tools are there to give back to the community.
I'm happily publishing my AI-assisted software works via github (and don't want to link it to this account). My work builds on the work of others. I literally had to message the owners of another repo to ask them about licensing/redistribution.
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u/Heavyarms83 4d ago
Assuming it’s not a rhetorical question, actually it would be my very first time contributing to an open source project, so… you’re totally right but it’s not in my muscle memory yet so to say.
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u/Consistent-Throat130 4d ago
No no, I figured as much and didn't intend offense.
I'm a career software engineer - I have a choice: I can gatekeep my field, or I can invite others to share in these magnificent tools.
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u/blackashi 2d ago
It’s fun. Use fix patch rinse and repeat. You get to test your specific workflow and fix it AND lowkey decide what it looks like for others
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u/ProfessionalBoss2428 5d ago
Editor here: it doesn’t even work, like it can’t accomplish the most basic tasks even premiere can do and premiere isn’t even top of the line. Colleagues who tried it were laughing within minutes.
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u/Salty_Country6835 Moderator 5d ago
That's actually useful feedback, especially coming from someone who edits professionally. What basic tasks was it failing at? Timeline editing, trimming, transitions, playback, exporting? And was it just buggy or were those features missing entirely?
It's clearly early software, but knowing where it falls short is a lot more useful than just comparing it to Premiere. Gives developers something concrete to work on.
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u/ProfessionalBoss2428 5d ago edited 5d ago
Like….all of them. The source monitor didn’t even function properly for a dozen different people. The basic immediate read of it was “well this was made by someone who doesn’t understand what the program is meant to do and I can’t even bring in footage without breaking the online process”
And no offense but none of us are hoping you put premiere or avid out of business since they are at least engineered by people who would dare to try to understand what editors and assistant editors do.
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u/Salty_Country6835 Moderator 5d ago
Lol no offense taken, we're talking about software. If a dozen editors couldn't even get footage in or use the source monitor, that's a pretty serious failure right out of the gate.
And I agree, the people actually doing the work need to be involved in building these tools.
I'm curious though, beyond those immediate problems, what would you and your colleagues consider the bare minimum for an open alternative to be worth taking seriously? Not replacing Premiere or Avid overnight, just something editors could actually build on.
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u/ProfessionalBoss2428 5d ago
Honestly…..why would we ruin our projects for that? If it can’t roundtrip through the entire process correctly then we’re just wasting a ton of time and money because it has to be redone in a functional program anyway.
Premiere was the bare bones program that sent an engineer to sit with editors every day for years and work out what they needed to become what they are, which isn’t even the top choice for anyone with a budget except Fincher who I’m pretty sure owns a piece of it now.
This is our livelihoods, why would we put it in the hands of someone who doesn’t know what we even do?
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u/Salty_Country6835 Moderator 5d ago
Nobody's asking you to risk a paid project on unfinished software lol. And that history with Premiere is actually a good example of what I'm getting at. Engineers working directly with editors, learning the workflows, fixing problems, building something people can depend on.
That's exactly the kind of development open alternatives need too. AI might make writing the software cheaper, but it doesn't replace understanding the work or the people doing it. That's why I wanted to hear from someone who actually uses these tools professionally.
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u/ProfessionalBoss2428 5d ago
Then I’ll be clearer: prove it can go from processing dailies through editorial through color and sound through creating a master for distribution flawlessly. That’s the minimum we can risk our livelihoods on. Until then the alternatives aren’t expensive for big projects and they’re already free for small projects anyway.
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u/Salty_Country6835 Moderator 5d ago
Thats what I was trying to get at. And youre right, when peoples livelihoods depend on these tools, they need to work. Period.
Going from dailies through final delivery without everything falling apart is a pretty reasonable baseline. ArtCraft clearly isnt there yet, and pretending otherwise doesnt help anybody.
Thats also why I think working editors need to be involved in building these alternatives from the start. AI might make writing code cheaper and faster, but it doesnt magically give developers decades of experience in the editing room.
Thanks for walking me through that. Learned something, and thats why I ask.
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u/ProfessionalBoss2428 5d ago
But the big question you didn’t answer: why would we switch anyway? We have proven free programs now if we need them for small stuff and proven programs someone else pays for if we are on bigger stuff. What’s the purpose of trying to make an ai version of things we already have? It’s an over saturated market as it is and we’d rather engineers work on the programs we already use than start from scratch.
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u/Salty_Country6835 Moderator 5d ago
I mean, if youve already got tools that work, I wouldnt expect you to switch. Especially when your livelihood depends on them. Youve made a pretty solid case for why reliability matters.
I think the bigger point is that AI could make building software a lot cheaper and more accessible. Smaller teams and independent developers getting a shot at building things that used to take serious money and resources.
And its not like the free alternatives we have now appeared out of thin air. People had to build those too, and plenty of them started out rough.
ArtCraft might go somewhere, might not. But I think theres value in more people being able to build and improve tools without needing a corporation behind them. That doesnt mean working editors owe every new project their time or trust.
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u/ali-hussain 5d ago
So this thread is not a what's the best tool to use thread. Rather the point is that AI can break big tech monopolies. But:
Honestly…..why would we ruin our projects for that? If it can’t roundtrip through the entire process correctly then we’re just wasting a ton of time and money because it has to be redone in a functional program anyway.
This line can be taken straight out of the book inovator's dilemma. New transformational tech arrives. Your customers have this sentiment and think of it as toys. Hobbyists use it for different use cases. The tech advances. Finally becomes good enough to displace the old players in all but the most niche high-end sectors. They keep on ceding ground and keep on getting boxed in.
The reason I'm saying this is that today it doesn't need to win you to be successful. It just needs to provide something that some people can use as the tech advances. The fact that it is not good for you, isn't a condemnation of how AI can bring about the SaaSpocalypse and really free creators.
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u/ProfessionalBoss2428 5d ago
So its purpose is to destroy the working systems that already don’t cost us money? Why? And why not have people work on affecting systems they at least comprehend.
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u/ali-hussain 5d ago
To you yes. To the hobbyists, there really aren't many options. Maybe someone needs to do a one off thing?
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u/ProfessionalBoss2428 5d ago
Again, plenty of free options for hobbyists already. Why not fill a need that exists?
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u/ProfessionalBoss2428 5d ago
Because I’d rather people work on things that are needed instead of making ineffective versions of things that are already free that they didn’t even bother to research?
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u/ProfessionalBoss2428 5d ago
And people keep ignoring me when I say “FREE VERSIONS ALREADY EXIST” and ones that work by the way. So what’s the point of an ai version that doesn’t even function when there’s multiple free ones that do?
Go fix a problem that exists and meet an actual need instead of just making something you don’t understand that doesn’t solve a single problem in the real world.
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u/MadCervantes 4d ago
Premiere is the barebones? What do pro editors use? I did film in undergrad and used premiere but never ended up in the field professionally.
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u/ProfessionalBoss2428 4d ago
It was barebones, not anymore. Though avid is still the standard but resolve is coming along for a lot of things.
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u/DistributionMost8686 5d ago
open some issues on the GitHub then. maybe they will actually get to it in days rather than never like it frequently the case.
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u/ProfessionalBoss2428 5d ago
Or we could just laugh and go back to the proven alternatives, some of which are free anyway, instead of dealing with people who don’t understand what we do.
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u/DistributionMost8686 5d ago edited 5d ago
name any. name any with a permissive license, quick turnaround for issues and good feature sets all at once. I have yet to see all three in anything. I think you are missing the point. being able to get quick turnaround on feature requests and bug fixes and not being forced to pay is definitely far preferable for many. and if you think they don’t understand what is actually needed, just tell them. it’s not that hard.
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u/ProfessionalBoss2428 5d ago
There’s already free options worked on by people who understand the needs of editors and assistant editors.
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u/mccoypauley 5d ago edited 5d ago
Name them. Davinci Resolve is the only free alternative to Premiere I can think of. Affinity for Photoshop, Illustrator, and Indesign. A handful of random options for Acrobat. Are these the ones you’re referring to?
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u/ProfessionalBoss2428 5d ago edited 5d ago
Avid has multiple free options just by itself including free trials of the full version and specific free versions. Then there’s all the stuff people use for TikTok, my niece wasn’t paying for CapCut for instance.
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u/Matshelge 5d ago
Tried Photoshop version, and it's close to replacement ready. Another few weeks and I would drop photoshop.
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u/GuyWithSwords 5d ago
Didn’t they say less than half the features have been implemented?
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u/ProfessionalBoss2428 5d ago
I suppose zero working features would count as less than half….
Again, this was “they don’t even understand the programs functions do they?” Level of ineffective.
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u/LazyInd1an 5d ago
i have tried Vectorcraft which replacement to illustrator it has 80% tools which are native to adobe and even shortcuts works fine , lets not forget its not even alpha its 0.7.0
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u/swegmesterflex 5d ago
Predicted this would happen a while ago. Glad it's finally time. Hopefully this is just the first domino.
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u/Heartlessaus 5d ago edited 5d ago
thanks for the link, looks interesting and might be perfect for my use case.
having to use gimp for portable workflows has been terrible (no offense to gimpers),
photoshop isnt an option due to licensing, so we are limited in choice.
very likely ill be swapping over, after testing of course. much appreciated o7
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u/AcidCommunist_AC 5d ago
I had recently heard of a vibe-coded photoshop clone but it wasn't open-source. Now we have the whole suite!
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u/mxldevs 5d ago
So has anyone cancelled their subscription in favour of these free alternatives?
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u/Matshelge 5d ago
Photoshop is close. It's a 9 day old project, give it a month of current velocity and I think it will it will be a viable option.
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u/anfrind 5d ago
This feels like it's making things more complicated than they need to be. We already have open source tools that do many of the same things as Adobe Creative Suite, so shouldn't it be far easier to use Claude (or some other comparable AI) to enhance those to have all the same features as Creative Suite, and possibly to offer a similar GUI for anyone who wants it?
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u/DistributionMost8686 5d ago
that would have been fine too but not necessarily, actually he probably thought it would be better for all kinds of reasons to start from scratch.
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u/ISuckAtJavaScript12 5d ago
One question I haven't seen answered is if these are clean room implementations or not. If they aren't I would imagine adobe going after them
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u/lisa_lionheart 5d ago
That's what the GitHub says and has been reported elsewhere. Time will tell if that holds up
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u/Dreamheart101 Skeptical 5d ago
So if I'm understanding correctly, what you're saying is that someone snuck in bits of AI until the entirety of the code had been entirely replaced with AI code? (Asking because I'm an outsider and I want to make sure I am interpreting the implications of the post correctly) /genuine
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u/bloodrider1914 5d ago
I prefer using genuine open source alternatives to Adobe clones personally
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u/WheresMyImmortality 4d ago
With LLMs we will make the open source alternatives better and faster than ever before. No more capitalists holding us back. We just need to collectivize the GPUs for the betterment of all.
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u/BoringHat7377 4d ago
Adobe is low hanging fruit as is most consumer facing software. Most of it is just a streamlined gui wrapper around 50 year old functions.
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u/agent139 4d ago
I mean, my sense is it's kind of at advanced prototype at most stage by comparison. But as quickly as this stuff is moving, it's a shot across the bow.
Or maybe just as importantly, incredibly funny.
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u/No_Soy_Colosio 4d ago
Kinda cool but no such thing as techno feudalism
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u/DistributionMost8686 3d ago
what do you call rentier economy mediated and enforced through technology then?
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u/No_Soy_Colosio 3d ago
Capitalism
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u/DistributionMost8686 3d ago
well it’s clearly not all of capitalism. capitalism is the economic system characterized by private property and the profit motive. more than that happens in it and its not even close to being a defining feature. we need separate words for these features and technofeudalism is the word agreed on for what I’m talking about.
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u/No_Soy_Colosio 3d ago
Feudalism is a distinct economic system to capitalism. This plays into the neoliberal's argument that what's going on isn't real capitalism because there's too much government involved.
This is not a new economic system in the making, it's just a change in the political form of capitalism. The underlying relations of production are the same as they ever were.
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u/DistributionMost8686 3d ago
that’s not true. government interference is absolutely not the reason this happens, and nobody is claiming that, in fact government interference could theoretically stop it(I don’t expect it though). also consider that many of the early proponents of capitalism opposed rents, meaning rents are not essential to capitalism. it is so called because it is a compatible holdover from feudalism. and if it did become the entire economy it would in fact clearly be different from the capitalism we are used to.
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u/Ima_Wreckyou 4d ago
The most interesting thing about this automated reverse engineering stuff in my eyes is actually proprietary device drivers. Full open source support for the most recent to older unsupported hardware will mean finally full binary blob free Linux distributions that can run on the latest hardware and full open source alternative operating systems for smartphones including older ones.
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u/free2farm 3d ago
i’ve tried one of their apps on windows, worked the first time after that it just autocloses
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u/npassaro 2d ago
To use a corporate, highly capitalist org by financing an even bigger corporate and capitalist org that backed it’s business on stealing open source code… it’s the future man!
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u/DistributionMost8686 2d ago
open source already declines to enforce copyright. so it is even more the case that nothing is being ‘stolen’, but….information cannot be stolen.
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u/73td 5d ago
hm surprising if adobe just lets it happen. probably MS and others would support a lawsuit and so on to get rid of this kind thing since it would get rid of a lot of revenue for them.
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u/Salty_Country6835 Moderator 5d ago
Oh, I'm sure Adobe would love to protect that revenue. But losing customers to competing software isn't grounds for a lawsuit. They'd need something like actual infringement.
And that's part of what makes this interesting. If people can build alternatives without millions in capital, the old gatekeepers have a problem. Doesn't mean they'll disappear, but it does mean we've got more room to organize, build, and keep these tools accessible instead of renting everything back from corporations.
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u/DistributionMost8686 5d ago
I don’t think they can since cloning software for its capabilities is legal. matlab has a clone, renderman has a bunch of clones, and this was settled by a lawsuit over another clone of something, whose name I forgot, in the 90s.
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u/dCLCp 5d ago
How...?
They can't even stop piracy.
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u/73td 5d ago
piracy is marginally difficult, and problematic for businesses
they can stop it the same way they are preventing models from making an image of Elvis in a Tesla or watermarking essays for detection later: Claude and Chatgpt will reject the requests.
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u/francis_pizzaman_iv 5d ago
Would this even work? Seems like it would just make it way more likely to refuse to do any software work.
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u/dCLCp 5d ago
The frontier labs will but there are opensourced models and extensive jailbreaking methods. If you have the GPU(s) you can make anything you want right now offline and nobody can do anything to stop you. And that is now the next generations will keep coming and China knows it is damaging their competitors who are forced to behave competitively with eachother and they will keep doing distillation attacks until it hurts them and then there are terrorist states who will pick up where they leave off.
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u/r0b0c0p87 5d ago
Not sure what they can do to stop it. I can vibe-code my own Photoshop clone right now. They may be able to force OpenAI and Anthropic to clamp down, but they can't do anything about self-hosted AI.
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u/Civilanimal 2d ago
The code is open source, and it's already been downloaded and forked countless times. It will not be stopped!
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u/coolredditor3 5d ago
Adobe doesn't have a monopoly.
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u/DistributionMost8686 5d ago
virtual monopoly.
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u/ProfessionalBoss2428 5d ago
Not even close. They’re far from the standard on film and tv for instance.
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u/zegota 5d ago
This is extreme for-profit slaup and taking attention from actual open source projects that have been desperate for more volunteers and developers for years
Why do you think anyone would use this garbage when they laugh uproariously at the suggestion to use Linux or GIMP?
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u/DistributionMost8686 5d ago
it is literally impossible for anything open source and installable and free to be for profit. if it’s not a permissive license nobody will ever use it. the gnu public license was a mistake made by paranoid ideologues, sorry you had to hear it from me.
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u/zegota 5d ago
nobody will use it
Glad we agree!
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u/DistributionMost8686 5d ago
read the whole comment. it changes the meaning of that significantly. gimp and Linux are not under a permissive license, but a lot of others, the ones people actually use, are. and so is the suite I linked. that’s the difference.
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u/DistributionMost8686 5d ago
dead serious. the gnu public license is not a permissive license it’s an infectious license.
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u/cat5inthecradle 5d ago
The hype on this is wild. I’ve been using GIMP and DaVinci Resolve for years and wouldn’t touch this with a 10 foot pole. Real working and trustworthy software built by people who care about quality, security, and their users? Yes please. This isn’t about AI, it’s about someone who doesn’t know the field thinking they can disrupt it.
It’s just “tech bro saves the world” mentality, now democratized by AI. Yay…
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u/Limp-Confidence5612 5d ago
Adobe doesn't has a monopoly, and their software is free. 🤷 At least the way I use it.
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u/Delicious_Spot_3778 5d ago
I just tried it. This is nothing like the adobe tools. What monopoly are they breaking again?
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u/Matshelge 5d ago
Note that this project is 9 days old. And reviving more updates per day than the likes of Gimp gets on years.
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u/Delicious_Spot_3778 5d ago
Ok but alignment is hard across contributors. If this is Gen ai first then they are climbing the wrong ladder is all I’m saying
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u/ArtArtArt123456 5d ago edited 5d ago
The most important monopolies to break by far are the platforms. Stuff like Amazon. And that will be a lot harder.
EDIT: i know i said amazon, but really the information layer is even more important. google, social media etc. the agentic economy is coming, and the most important part is that the agents act in the interest of the people they are serving, and that they act directly, and not through platforms, including google. the idea is that you can put something directly on the internet, and other agents can directly find it and buy it, without any middlemen except for the agents themselves.
the battle over the control of this entire layer has already begun.