--- title: They Used AI to Rebuild Photoshop & More… Then... description: Open-source clean room reimplementations of Photoshop (Photocraft), Premiere Pro, and Lightroom, written in pure Rust, were reportedly built using AI agents... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/they-used-ai-to-rebuild-photoshop-more-then-open-sourced-it-ewnt2qve7 twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: They Used AI to Rebuild Photoshop & More… Then Open-Sourced It | daily.dev og:description: Open-source clean room reimplementations of Photoshop (Photocraft), Premiere Pro, and Lightroom, written in pure Rust, were reportedly built using AI agents... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/they-used-ai-to-rebuild-photoshop-more-then-open-sourced-it-ewnt2qve7 og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/EwnT2qVe7.png og:image:alt: They Used AI to Rebuild Photoshop & More… Then Open-Sourced It og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # They Used AI to Rebuild Photoshop & More… Then Open-Sourced It **[SavvyNik](https://daily.dev/sources/savvynik)** · 10 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Open-source clean room reimplementations of Photoshop (Photocraft), Premiere Pro, and Lightroom, written in pure Rust, were reportedly built using AI agents that reverse engineered the proprietary applications in weeks rather than years, reaching an estimated 60-70% feature parity. The method relies on blackbox reverse engineering: AI agents study public documentation, file formats, and screenshots, break functionality into components, generate code, and test outputs against the original software without accessing source code. The piece speculates this could undermine proprietary software moats, raises unresolved legal questions around clean-room doctrine when AI models were trained on copyrighted material, and argues this trend favors open source by lowering the cost of replicating complex commercial software. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### What is Photocraft and how close is it to real Photoshop functionality? Photocraft is an open-source clean room reimplementation of Adobe Photoshop written in pure Rust (about 99% Rust code), built by a project called Arcraft. It was produced using AI agents performing blackbox reverse engineering rather than copying source code, reaching an estimated 60 to 70 percent feature parity with Photoshop, with maintainers acknowledging broken workflows and missing tools still remain. _Developers tracking AI-driven reverse engineering projects like this can follow the fast-moving story on daily.dev._ ### How did AI agents reverse engineer Photoshop without access to its source code? AI agents used blackbox reverse engineering: they studied public documentation, file formats, screenshots, and tutorials to understand features, split the software into components with dedicated agents per feature (layers, brushes, filters), generated code for each piece, then compiled and tested it by comparing output against the real Photoshop application, repeating until results matched. _Teams evaluating how AI agents approach complex software replication can keep up with these methods on daily.dev._ ### Is clean room reverse engineering with AI legally safe from copyright claims? It is legally uncertain. Clean room reverse engineering has historically been upheld because reproducing functional behavior is protectable while copying code is not, but AI complicates this since models may have been trained on copyrighted source code, and questions remain about interface similarity, confidential information use, and how courts will treat AI-assisted clean room claims. _Developers weighing the legal risk of AI-assisted reverse engineering projects can follow the unfolding debate on daily.dev._ --- Tags: [#open-source](https://daily.dev/tags/open-source), [#ai-agents](https://daily.dev/tags/ai-agents), [#rust](https://daily.dev/tags/rust), [#adobe](https://daily.dev/tags/adobe), [#reverse-engineering](https://daily.dev/tags/reverse-engineering) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/they-used-ai-to-rebuild-photoshop-more-then-open-sourced-it-ewnt2qve7) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"They Used AI to Rebuild Photoshop & More… Then Open-Sourced It","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/they-used-ai-to-rebuild-photoshop-more-then-open-sourced-it-ewnt2qve7","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/they-used-ai-to-rebuild-photoshop-more-then-open-sourced-it-ewnt2qve7"},"datePublished":"2026-10-08T18:43:59.482Z","dateModified":"2026-10-10T05:32:03.236Z","description":"Open-source clean room reimplementations of Photoshop (Photocraft), Premiere Pro, and Lightroom, written in pure Rust, were reportedly built using AI agents...","image":"https://i.ytimg.com/vi/doHqV2t26KU/sddefault.jpg","thumbnailUrl":"https://i.ytimg.com/vi/doHqV2t26KU/sddefault.jpg","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"SavvyNik","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"SavvyNik","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--WqWN5vuC--/f_auto/v1743923591/logos/savvynik","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/savvynik"},"commentCount":0,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/they-used-ai-to-rebuild-photoshop-more-then-open-sourced-it-ewnt2qve7","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":0},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":0}],"keywords":"open-source,ai-agents,rust,adobe,reverse-engineering","timeRequired":"PT10M","video":{"@type":"VideoObject","name":"They Used AI to Rebuild Photoshop & More… Then Open-Sourced It","description":"Open-source clean room reimplementations of Photoshop (Photocraft), Premiere Pro, and Lightroom, written in pure Rust, were reportedly built using AI agents...","thumbnailUrl":"https://i.ytimg.com/vi/doHqV2t26KU/sddefault.jpg","uploadDate":"2026-10-08T18:43:59.482Z","duration":"PT10M","url":"https://api.daily.dev/r/EwnT2qVe7","embedUrl":"https://www.youtube.com/embed/doHqV2t26KU"}} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"SavvyNik","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/savvynik"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"They Used AI to Rebuild Photoshop & More… Then Open-Sourced It"}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"FAQPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/they-used-ai-to-rebuild-photoshop-more-then-open-sourced-it-ewnt2qve7#faq","mainEntity":[{"@type":"Question","name":"What is Photocraft and how close is it to real Photoshop functionality?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"Photocraft is an open-source clean room reimplementation of Adobe Photoshop written in pure Rust (about 99% Rust code), built by a project called Arcraft. 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