Developer builds free Photoshop and Office clones in weeks

A developer has used artificial intelligence to create free copies of Photoshop and Microsoft Office in a matter of weeks, ERR’s R2 Portal reports. The software raises questions about whether a similar approach could one day be used to design human DNA, writes technology commentator Kristjan Port.

The method, known as “vibe coding”, involves describing a desired program to an AI system, which then produces working code. The term followed a casual comment by Andrei Karpathy in February 2025 and was selected as the Collins English Dictionary’s word of the year that same year.

Brandon Thomas, a developer with 15 years of programming experience, reportedly created Adobe’s full range of software tools in about a week by describing what he wanted. Over the weekend, he also released versions of Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint for all operating systems. He has said his next target is AutoCAD, software for engineering drawings, and declared the end of the commercial software era as he aims to create a free-software era.

Early users of PhotoCraft, his Photoshop clone, have responded with positive surprise. Its appearance and user interface are the same as the original, according to the article.

Port considers whether the same prompt-based approach could ever be applied to human DNA. In theory, someone might ask an AI-equipped laboratory robot to create a DNA sequence for a version of “Human 0.1 (Vibe Edition)”. The human genome contains about 3.2 billion base pairs, but only a small part codes for the roughly 20,000 proteins needed to build the body. The remaining 98 per cent includes regulatory sequences, repeated elements and evolutionary inheritance.

Early steps are also being taken towards complete ectogenesis: developing an embryo or fetus outside a biological body, under artificial conditions, from fertilisation to birth. Interest in the possibility is driven not only by scientific aims but also by an ageing population in which people have fewer children and do so later.

A person might appear complete in a superficial demonstration, with two eyes, ten fingers, a heart and a brain. But some of the non-coding DNA is essential for an organism to function, survive in a changing world and reproduce, Port writes. Deciding what to include would remain a challenge.