Craft or Cruft?

For the last two weeks I’ve been barraged by people asking me to comment on the appearance of the ArtCraft clones of Adobe and Microsoft products. Whatever I have to say about them, though, will pale against the what both users and courts will eventually say about the clones. My first take is this: the (now) team behind this effort is sure good at storytelling and marketing. I’m also intrigued by the “Made by Artists, for Artists” tag line given that it really should read “Copied by AI, for AI users.” I’m not being coy with that switch: if you hit the Pricing link you find “Your subscription helps keep ArtCraft free and open for everyone.” Say what? Given the scope of the project—copy all Adobe and Microsoft apps, with Autodesk next in the queue—putting ArtCraft all together took a pretty large up-front cash and time commitment. I’ve vibe coded with Claude for awhile now, and getting the big models to do this much work probably cost in the thousands of dollars a month, possibly far…