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

Published Oct 10, 2026, 1:26 AM EDT Simon is a Computer Science BSc graduate who has been writing about technology since 2014, and using Windows machines since 3.1. After working for an indie game studio and acting as the family's go-to technician for all computer issues, he found his passion for writing and decided to use his skill set to write about all things tech. Since beginning his writing career, he has written for many different publications such as WorldStart, Listverse, and MakeTechEasier. However, after finding his home at MakeUseOf in February 2019, he would eventually move on to its sister site, XDA, to bring the latest and greatest in Windows, Linux, and DIY electronics. Sign in to your XDA account Summary AI helped build an open-source, 100% Rust suite recreating seven Adobe apps for free. The maintainer says they're a 15-year industry vet with ~10 years of Rust experience and funded support. If matured, this could either topple paid tools or just add more AI-generated, vibe-coded slop to the market. 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 as to how much work they put in themselves, or if 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: "This isn't going to be some orphaned small-team project either. We have a team building popular software for filmmakers, so supporting this is fully funded. Our purpose is serving every artist in the world with the best tools. We are absolutely going to bring these to full parity and squash every bug and feature request. We have a test harness so there won't be regressions." 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, any bugs and issues found will be quickly ironed out. And if they achieve that, then 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 making alternatives to proprietary, for free, 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.