AI-Coded Clone of Adobe's Creative Cloud Appears on GitHub

A GitHub repository credited to two people appeared roughly a week ago containing code that appears to replicate much of Adobe's Creative Cloud suite — and the developer community believes AI built it.

The project, ArtCraft, includes cloned apps that, according to statements by its developers on the ArtCraft Discord server, constitute a clean-room reverse engineering of Adobe Creative Cloud. The clones look and feel like Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere and the rest of the suite.

Design Week, which first reported the story, noted the scale problem: two humans cannot generate this much code in such a short time — "or even a lifetime" — suggesting the project is entirely AI-built.

What do early users say?

James O'Malley, who tried the software on 7 October 2026, posted on Bluesky: "I know it's literally a recreation of Photoshop but it is.. just… Photoshop. My jaw is on the floor."

His enthusiasm was qualified. After using "Photocraft", the Photoshop rebuild, he reported: "gaussian blur didn't work and it felt a bit wonky, but given this software has been available for like, 24 hours, it feels like it will rapidly improve."

How was it built?

Two theories circulate among observers:

• The developers used local software agents that worked through the entire suite, worked out every detail, and replicated it all in fresh, clean code.
• They decompiled Adobe's software and had AI rebuild it in the Rust programming language — an approach that would generally breach Adobe's licensing terms.

The ArtCraft tools also differ from Adobe's in one fundamental respect: they are designed around MCP (Model Context Protocol), a way of providing information to AIs about what the software is doing.

Is it safe to install?

Design Week's writer, a former software engineer, declined to run the software, citing trust issues with unaudited, AI-generated code that has disk access. The ArtCraft Discord server, the report notes, is "absolutely lit up" with discussion.

The warning is blunt: AI-generated code that has not been fully audited by experts cannot really be trusted, and other AI agents are remarkably good at finding vulnerabilities that even professionals leave behind. For people who do not know how to code, "vibe coded" software is dangerous — in the way that anyone can create a poster with AI, but only a good designer can create a good poster with AI.

What does it mean for Adobe and the industry?

The report predicts that Adobe's lawyers will be "all over this one" and that the project will not survive long unless it is well funded. ArtCraft looks janky in places, Design Week concedes, but the implication is stark: if two people and AI can get this far in a week, imagine what a team of professional engineers with budget and reputation could achieve.

The deeper claim is about power inversion. AI has proven it can replicate what already exists — a prospect Design Week describes as potentially terrifying for tech firms whose business is built on owning something they rent out. The comparison: what money would there be in being a landlord if someone could create their own land and home for pennies?

Adobe was itself an early mover in building AI tools into its software — tools that, as Design Week puts it, scooped up images without asking and "regurgitated" elements of them repeatedly with zero reward for original creators. Now, the report concludes, the tech companies may be about to get the same done to them as they have done to the creative community.