12MB Open-Source Photoshop Alternative Sparks Debate on AI-Driven App Cloning
teropa · x · 2026-09-19
Robbie Tilton open-sourced Compositor, a Photoshop-like image editor that is just 12MB (versus 6,455MB for Photoshop on his machine), covering essential compositing tools—built originally to escape his Adobe subscription.
MLStreet Talk's repost framed the bigger implication: computer use has made industrialized app cloning relatively easy—"this is the new web scraping"—and apps like Photoshop will likely add anti-computer-use protections akin to DRM, though it may already be too late.
The same author cautions against overexcitement: Photoshop is really 1,000+ applications in one, with complexity concentrated in the long tail. Most users need only the most common 5-10% of features, and extrapolating that AI can rebuild the full product misunderstands its complexity.
Related event: Developer Ships 12MB Open-Source Photoshop Alternative Built With Claude(2 posts)→
More from Fun
- Pre-LLM CS Grads Can Never Be True Vibe Coders — They've Seen Too Much — PMinervini · 2026-09-19
- Schmidhuber reignites priority disputes: claims 3 Turing Award winners republished his ideas uncredited — SchmidhuberAI · 2026-09-19
- His most-retweeted post ever is still a 2020 GPT-3 conversation about God — Merzmensch · 2026-09-19
- Fan wires meme AI 'Jev' into an Evangelion MAGI-style three-personality council — i_dg23 · 2026-09-19
- Developer hooks classification-only model Jev to Slay the Spire 2, reaches first boss for 3 cents/hour — Zboubkiller · 2026-09-19
- X user proposes jailing top AI safety expert for 30 days with $1M of OpenAI credits to test escape — wen_ragnarok · 2026-09-19