The imitation is far from the finished article. But when a familiar set of tools can be recreated in days, the companies that spent decades building them face an uncomfortable question: What will customers still pay for?
U.S. developer Brandon Thomas released ArtCraft in early October, a collection of seven free apps modeled on Adobe programs, from Photoshop for editing pictures to Premiere for editing video. Less than two weeks later, he added alternatives to Microsoft's Word, Excel and PowerPoint.
He built them with Anthropic's Claude, an AI system that can write computer code. The apps are open source, meaning others can inspect, modify and build on that code.
For South Korean users paying 78,100 won ($59) a month for Adobe's software package, the appeal is obvious. The limitations become clearer once they start clicking.
In AJP's hands-on test, PhotoCraft, the Photoshop stand-in, could resize images and draw basic shapes. But its color-editing tools were sparse, its options for saving finished work were limited, and it lacked an AI-powered eraser. Its developers themselves rate it about 45 percent ready for professional work.
It is no Photoshop replacement yet. It does show how quickly AI can help someone build a usable imitation — and how little they can charge for it.
In South Korea, a similar experiment has tackled a more everyday frustration: opening a document.
The developer said AI helped build the tool in about three weeks using technical specifications Hancom published in 2010. Hancom Office sells for 99,000 won to individual buyers.
Hancom has said it does not plan legal action because the format is public. It has instead welcomed such programs as a way to expand its presence online.
That response points to a distinction easily lost in the excitement over AI "clones." Building an app that reads another company's documents is different from reproducing its software or repackaging its games. The projects attracting attention span all three.
Some developers work from publicly available instructions, as rhwp's creator did. Others turn to reverse engineering: examining a finished program to figure out how it works.
Think of buying a rival's car and stripping it down to understand the gearbox. In software, that once meant specialists spending months poring over instructions written for computers rather than people.
AI is taking on more of that detective work.
An open-source tool called REA, short for Reverse Engineer Anything, connects AI coding assistants to software-analysis tools. Together, they can examine parts of a program, follow what it does and test ideas about how it works.
Games have become a particularly conspicuous testing ground.
"I put the entire of game Minecraft into Elden Ring as mod. It runs on Mac," an X user with the handle @TobynJacobs wrote in a Sept. 29 post. The accompanying footage showed Minecraft's blocky hero Steve fighting through Elden Ring. The modification has not been publicly released.
Rights holders have begun pushing back. Fallout: New York, a browser game built with Claude, went dark on Oct. 1 after its creator said he had received a cease-and-desist letter from Bethesda.
Another open-source project, AnyPS5, aims to convert PlayStation 5 games so they can run directly on a PC. Its developers say users must buy the games they convert.
The promise still runs well ahead of the results. Only a handful of more than 180 titles tested are verified as playable. Yet online creators are already speculating about using it to bring Grand Theft Auto VI, due Nov. 19 on consoles only, to PCs.
For software companies, these experiments pose two questions: Where does useful compatibility end and copying begin? And when is an imitator worth embracing?
"Technology has kept advancing, and every step brought worries about what could go wrong," said Jung Ji-young, a professor of AI game software at Keimyung University in Daegu.
Jung compared the backlash to the arrival of smartphones, when some users insisted analog phones were simpler. Regulators, he said, would need to distinguish between learning how a program works and copying it.
"This is not a technology that should be banned outright by law and stopped from developing," he said. "It is the growing pains we have to go through on the way."
Kong Duk-jo, a professor of AI policy and strategy at the Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology, questioned whether restrictions alone could hold back the change.
"Can the law even stop it? And even if it does, would that work? I personally have my doubts," he said.
Kong argued that half-finished knockoffs can make the originals more valuable by reminding users what they are paying for. A collection of familiar buttons is easier to reproduce than the wider network of services and tools that keeps people using a platform.
"Rather than shutting them out and fighting over copyright, it is much faster to bring them onto your side," he said.
He suggested South Korea open its doors wider to such experiments while other advanced economies remain entangled in rules governing AI and data. Overseas software firms could receive investment and test products on platforms run by companies such as Samsung Electronics and Naver.
A Vietnamese startup that proves its product through such a partnership, for example, could then help take the Korean platform into its home market, he said.
Thomas, meanwhile, releases his apps under licenses that allow others to copy them freely.
In a story about cloning, it may be the only copying nobody is arguing about.
AJP Takeaways
- AI-assisted modders have merged and ported games at speed since late September 2026, putting Minecraft inside Elden Ring and Halo: Combat Evolved into web browsers.
- Fallout: New York, a browser game built with Claude, went dark on Oct. 1, 2026, after its creator said he had received a cease-and-desist letter from Bethesda.
- AnyPS5, an open-source project that converts PlayStation 5 game files into programs that run natively on PC, has fueled online speculation that Grand Theft Auto VI, due Nov. 19, 2026, on consoles only, could reach PC.
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