When AI Clones Your Software From the Outside, Sentinel Protects What’s Inside

Photoshop took Adobe more than three decades to build. In early October 2026, a free look-alike appeared on GitHub, the main site where developers share code. Six more Adobe look-alikes arrived alongside it. Most of their code was written by AI agents, in about a week. They didn't steal Adobe's code. They didn't need to.

Software Monetization

Oren Bear | Product Manager, Thales
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Photoshop took Adobe more than three decades to build. In early October 2026, a free look-alike appeared on GitHub, the main site where developers share code. Six more Adobe look-alikes arrived alongside it. Most of their code was written by AI agents, in about a week.

They didn't steal Adobe's code. They didn't need to.

Key points:

• AI can now copy what your software visibly does, quickly and cheaply, without ever looking inside it.
• What it can't easily copy is the value it can't see: your algorithms, your file formats and your AI models.
• That hidden value is only safe if your software doesn't give it away. Protection keeps it hidden.

Seven Clones, Built by Watching

The team behind them, ArtCraft, calls them "Crafting Apps": PhotoCraft for Photoshop, plus look-alikes of Illustrator, Premiere Pro, Lightroom, Acrobat, After Effects and InDesign. Within eight days they had over 42,000 GitHub stars, a common measure of developer interest, according to Pasquale Pillitteri.

Developer Brandon Thomas credits Anthropic's Claude Opus 5.5. In one session, OrcaRouter reports, eight AI agents working in parallel added about 70 Photoshop menu items in a few hours, while one human handled testing and releases. How do you copy software without its code? There are two ways:

• Look inside. Decompilation turns the machine code a company ships back into readable logic. It's like stealing the chef's recipe card.
• Watch from outside. Read the documentation, try every feature, and compare what goes in with what comes out. It's like working out the recipe by tasting the dish.

PhotoCraft says it did the second. Its README states it was built from public specifications and observed behavior only. Most of the knowledge came from Adobe's own documentation, public file specifications, online tutorials and what the AI already knew. The rest took only ordinary use of a licensed copy. Nothing about it would look suspicious.

These claims are the project's own and haven't been independently verified. But the message for every software vendor is clear: anyone with a copy of your product and an AI subscription can create a seemingly identical clone.

The Look Was Easy to Copy. The Quality Wasn’t.

By PhotoCraft's own count, all 625 of Photoshop's menu items now work. But only about 68% of its test images match Photoshop's output exactly, and its AI features are close to zero. The project itself says it's not ready for daily professional work.

Copied fast, because it's visibleHarder to copy, because it's hidden, but not impossibleMenus, shortcuts and workflowsProprietary algorithmsDocumented file formatsPrivate or encrypted file formatsSimple, predictable featuresAI models trained on your data

That's the good news. The bad news: "good enough" and free can still take your price-sensitive customers. And in regions with weak trademark enforcement, the next clone may not bother with a new name. It could carry your product's name and logo. When it crashes or corrupts a file, your customers will blame you. To solve this you need to identify the business advantages competitors can’t easily duplicate. That becomes your moat. Against AI cloning, your moat is the algorithms and know-how hidden inside your product. This is where Sentinel can help you.

See How Fast You Can Stop AI-Driven Attacks

Explore how Sentinel protects your applications from automated vulnerability discovery and reverse engineering—right out of the box.

See It In Action

But hidden code has a weak spot. If a competitor can open your software using readily available reverse engineering tools and read it, nothing is hidden. In our AI analysis test, an AI agent using such a tool (Ghidra decompiler) read the logic of an unprotected application in about three minutes.

Three Sentinel Capabilities Keep Your IP Protected

• Your algorithms: Sentinel Envelope Plus. It scrambles the code of the functions you choose, so it no longer reveals its logic, and adds anti-tampering and

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When AI Clones Your Software From the Outside, Sentinel Protects What’s Inside