A company worth billions of dollars, with thousands of people working on it, has just had seven of its best known apps rebuilt by one person with AI. His name is Brandon Thomas. He reportedly started at the end of September, and by the first week of October there were free versions of Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere, Lightroom and more, all open source, all given away. He has said it began with his frustration over the fees Adobe charges to cancel a subscription. Then he did the same to Word, Excel and PowerPoint.
I Tried It
I tried it myself, so this is not something I only read about. It is not the same as the original, and I will not pretend it is. When I tried to select a subject, it did not select it properly. Many of the AI features are not up to the original. But I would say over 85 percent of it is already perfect, and in some ways it is quicker than the original.
Read that again. This is not a team in a building with a budget. This is one person.
The Number That Matters
Eighty five percent is my own feeling, not a benchmark. But think about what it means. That 85 percent is the part that used to need the teams and the offices and the years, and one person with AI did it in roughly a week, by the reports I read. What is left is the part where the original still wins, like the selection that did not select. I do not know how long that gap lasts.
That is the thing I cannot put down. What happens on the day it is 100 percent.
Not A Clean Story
I am not saying it is right. Critics say the apps may break Adobe's terms, which do not allow recreating its products, and I do not know how that argument ends. Reviewers also say it is rough and early. Both of those can be true while the other thing is true as well. It exists, it works, it is free, and one person did it.
Wonder Again
Last week I wrote about intelligence becoming a commodity. This is what that looks like when it lands on a product people pay for every month. Software used to be protected by how hard it was to build. If one person can build the first 85 percent in a week, then the protection has to be something else now, and I am not sure what that something is.
I do not have a neat ending. I have a gap of about 15 percent today, a person who closed the other 85 alone, and a question I cannot put down. Yes, it is time to think.