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The Death of Paid Software? AI Creates Free ADOBE & OFFICE Clones · Kvetch & Release

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: It is time for Lidkey's Gotta Take. Good morning, John.
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Good morning, Gene. Well, this is a fantastic take you
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: have this morning. I'm calling it the Napster of 2026.
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: An open source developer just used artificial intelligence to create,
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: I guess we could call it a mimic of Microsoft
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Office programs like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, even Adobe products. And
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: he's giving them away totally free. Yikes. Now, is this
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: the ultimate victory for consumers sick and tired of monthly work?
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: subscription fees? Or is this just plain digital piracy with
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: a very slick artificial intelligence coat of paint?
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: Calling this piracy completely misses the mark about how code
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: actually works. I mean, they didn't break, he didn't break
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: into Adobe headquarters wearing a black turtleneck and a mask
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: at 3am to steal source code and copy it onto
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: a thumb drive. He described what the program does and
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: the AI-generated functions that replicate that. And now, listen, I'm
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: not a lawyer, and I'm certainly not an IP lawyer,
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: and I'm sure that in Silicon Valley there's entire firms
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: right now that are putting down payments on new summer
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: homes because of this. But functionally, recreating utility is not theft.
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: I mean, Maytag can't sue Whirlpool because Whirlpool built a
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: cold metal box that stops your milk from spoiling. That's
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: a refrigerator. Writing code that makes things bold or that
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: can change the color of a photo or crop it
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: isn't piracy. That's just manufacturing a new product.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: Well, you know, it's interesting that you're talking about this
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: because when I learned about it, I was licking my
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: chops because I just had to do my yearly subscription
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: to Microsoft Office programs a couple of weeks ago. Now,
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: you know, I was on the air here, been calling
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: it the Napster parallel. So when Napster hit back, back
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: in 99, it shattered the music industry's business model overnight.
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: So are we looking at software's Napster moment here, where
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: a single guy with an AI prompt can make a
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: multi-billion dollar tech suite pretty well obsolete in a weekend?
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: I think it's looking like that. AI is showing that
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: it can vaporize legacy software IP in that afternoon or
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: a weekend, and I think that the tech boardrooms should
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: be sweating through their fleece vests right now in Silicon Valley.
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: I mean, how do you legally ban someone from recreating
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: a drop-down menu, Gene? I mean, it's like telling an
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: artist they can't paint the CN Tower because someone else
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: painted it from the exact same angle in 1982. I mean,
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: theft is not happening here. just mimicry. And as the
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: old saying goes, though, I mean, mimicry is the highest
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: form of flattery.
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, these AI apps aren't exactly 100% as polished
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: as the real deal, but they work. And for small
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: business owners, people like me, you know, that could trim
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: your monthly bill down substantially. Now, isn't 80% functionality for
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: $ 0 a good trade-off for the millions and millions of
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: people who are going to take a look at this?
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: Without question, Gene, absolutely. I spoke with a friend of
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: mine yesterday, a professional photographer who works with really high-end clients,
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: and he downloaded the open-source AI clones, ran a batch,
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: and he said, man, it works well enough, John, and
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: I don't have to pay for things anymore. So download
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: it if you want it before it gets taken off
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: of the repositories that it's on right now online. But
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: when a seasoned professional says good enough for $ 0, that's
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: a catastrophic problem for Adobe or for Microsoft Office. Why
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: pay $ 60 a month or whatever it is in perpetuity
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: when you can pay nothing today? And corporate law firms
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: aren't going to switch because they need enterprise entities to
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: be able to sue when a server goes down or something.
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: But for small businesses, freelancers, students, they won't just jump ship.
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: They're on the shore watching the corporate boat sink themselves.
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: And quite frankly... It's been brought on by them. The
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: reason that the person made this AI app was because
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: he went to cancel his Adobe subscription, and they charged
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: him a cancellation fee because he was doing it early.
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: So it was an early termination fee, and he just
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: got fed up and mad. And so here we are.
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: He decided to break a multibillion-dollar industry because he got
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: pissed off.
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: Well, listen, if an individual developer can use AI to
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: replicate really about 30 years of Microsoft engineering, I'm wondering
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: what big tech does next. Do they send in the
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: lawyers or do they put everything behind a paywall?
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: You know, they'll send the lawyers, they'll build the paywalls,
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: and then they'll hit a real wall when they prove
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: that both are entirely ineffective. At some point, you actually
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: have to compete by engineering a superior product rather than
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: just locking the digital exit doors. And we used to
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: rely on the classic tech axiom that if the product
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: is free, you are the product. But That playbook is shred.
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: This code will run on your hard drive offline for free,
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: and it's customized for you in some cases is what
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: they're talking about. So executives should be having existential crises
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: right now in boardrooms trying to figure out how marketing
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: and sales teams can possibly compete with it's free, it's yours,
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: and it doesn't phone home to charge your credit card.
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: You know, if you look at the big picture, is
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: paying a monthly software fee like rent, I guess we
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: could say, Is it officially dead now?
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: I sure hope so, Gene. The SAS model, S-A-S, software
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: as a service, that's an unholy anti-consumer extractivism project from
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: the start. I mean, I miss the era where you
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: went to the store, you bought a physical box, you
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: took out a shiny plastic disc. Or gosh, I say
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: floppy disk in some cases. I'm old enough to remember those.
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: You installed it and you owned the software until the
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: sun went dark and the universe was gone. It was yours, though.
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: I want this AI wave to trigger massive, furious consumer
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: revolts that destroys recurring subscriptions everywhere across our markets. not
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: just for software. I want car manufacturers trying to charge
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: a $ 15 monthly recurring fee to unlock your heated seats
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: that are already wired into the vehicle you paid for.
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: I know. I know.
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: That's crazy.
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: It's nuts. So if I buy something, Gene, it's simple.
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: It should belong to me entirely in perpetuity, and I
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: can do what I want with, and it should not
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: be tethered to a corporate spreadsheet that tracks my usage
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: for billing. All right.
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: Final question here on your take this morning. Are we
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: heading towards a future where we just say, to heck
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: with software packages, I'm not going to buy it. I'm
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: just going to ask AI to build whatever I need?
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think so. You know, there's a tech founder
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: who recently tweeted a joke about prompting AI to decompile
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: the new Grand Theft Auto game that's coming out. And
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: to me, that's the ultimate dream. I've wanted to play
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: Grand Theft Auto GTA Greater Toronto Area my whole life.
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: Just three straight hours of sitting completely motionless in bumper-to-bumper
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: construction traffic near Milton in a stolen 2008 Honda Civic.
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: I mean, what more could you ask for in a game, Gene?
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: But listen, on a serious note, whether it's hyper-specific cross-border
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: tax calculators or a trimmed-down version of Photoshop stripped of
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: the 900 features that you don't need, on-demand custom utility
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: is where this is heading. And unlike scraping copyrighted books
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: or music to train the LLMs that we've talked about
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: before with AI, having functional code written that performs like
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: existing code it's not ip theft it's i mean software
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  Speaker 2: is supposed to serve the user not sit in your
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: banking app auto drafting 20 bucks out of your account
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: every 30 days until the end of time.
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: Great take this morning we'll talk to you again friday
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: morning 9.
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: 15 looking forward to it gene there
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: He goes john litke litke's gotta take