I think people aren't thinking enough about the second-order effects of this.
The immediate reaction is to ask whether any of these would be good enough to replace Photoshop (or Pixelmator or whatever). That's a first-order question and it's an open one --- you probably couldn't replace a real workflow with vibe Photoshop today, but I wouldn't bet against that being the case a year from now.
But the second-order questions include consideration of the people who can't use Photoshop, either because of cost or (to me, more importantly) because of lack of platform support.
In a world where 90% of the functionality of things like Photoshop and Word are replaceable with personal apps, how much does platform support matter anymore? How much do platforms matter anymore? I'm a committed macOS user and have been since the TiBook. Will I be 5 years from now? I'm deeply uncertain, but one thing I'm pretty sure of is that if I'm not a macOS user, I also won't be a Windows or Linux user.
Plus, most people don't use 90% of Photoshop. How does the saying go? "The average user only uses 10% of a software's features, but every user uses a different 10%."
Now, you can just prompt the 10% you need and not even have to use up your computer's resources with the rest of Photoshop. I didn't like a single one of the many Android TV video player apps. Most of them were way too big, had all kinds of features I didn't need, took a while to launch, had stupid "libraries" that you had to populate your videos into, and relied on third party lookup services to get things like movie posters and other metadata. Pre-2020 I would have just picked the least bad one and lived with it. Now, I just vibe-slopped a player app with only the features I want and nothing else.
> Now, I just vibe-slopped a player app with only the features I want and nothing else.
Out of curiosity, how much did that cost?
I dunno, upper-bound $20 if it took me the whole month of subscription (it didn't) and if that was all I used that month of LLM for (it wasn't).
And how much will it cost next year when all these companies IPO and need to pay back all that insane debt?
By next year, the open models will be as good as the frontier models are this year and we can use them just for the cost of power/hardware
probably the amount if tokens multiplied by whatever price GLM 3.5 or 4.1 flash etc are going for
I predicted something a few years ago that I still believe will come true: in time, you won't search YouTube for an existing, pre-recorded video that solves your itch, instead you'll describe a problem and a video will be generated in real-time, on the spot that meets your needs. This video will (legally, with consent) use the faces and voices of "YouTubers" (humans who have signed up their personality) to communicate with you. If you don't have subscriptions or the system wants to show you new "creators", then it'll still do what it does today plus generate new personalities that fit your profile - gay/heterosexual, male/female, 20-25 years old, etc.
The same applies to software: you'll describe a problem and a network of agents will write a solution faster than you can Google it, download it, install it, and start using it. It'll work with your accessibility requirements out of the box; it's UI will be in your language; the data will be stored where ever you like; and so on.
Isn't that completely terrifying? Some of the last tiny shreds of human connection in the digital landscape (shared experiences and the human creator/viewer relationship) replaced by a relationship with a corporation.
If you think people are wasting their time scrolling reels now, the one social benefit is that you might have seen one of the same ones as your (human) friends. Imagine if that was gone. Truly horrifying.
Mmm. Tastes like lotuses.
> The same applies to software: you'll describe a problem and a network of agents will write a solution faster than you can Google it, download it, install it, and start using it. It'll work with your accessibility requirements out of the box; it's UI will be in your language; the data will be stored where ever you like; and so on.
This exists now.
You can have gemini AI - the that's built into google search - just make little applets. I just made one for a color picker, and generating palettes, including one that applies aces tone mapping. It showed made little adjsutable sliders and everything.
For a while, chatgpt web didnt count against usage, and you could use sol, it was isnane, you could upload a screenshot and just ask it to build out a little editor with threejs, and whatever else.
There's grok bot, dots, and other 'bots' that are just doing independent actions in the background. That can do digital actions like organize your documents, send emails for rebates, etc.
If you accept the shame, you can literally have bite sized story telling that are like mini soap operas, completely cheesy, predictable plots but that are very good guilty pleasures.
> it'll still do what it does today plus generate new personalities that fit your profile
Please no. Enough with putting everyone into a box/label/profile. Have people be exposed to and interact with the multitudinal variety of the world!
I have thought about something kind of similar to your last paragraph.
Instead of having a web application with a typical frontend and backend, I have fantasized about thin UI/UX interfaces with an almost pure LLM backend. Just having one or more bots receive parsed http requests, CRUD-ing the data based on training and tool access, and responding back if necessary.
(I have a strong dislike for web development, so perhaps my fantasies are a form of escapism.)
I think the second order effect is that games and software become cloud only where you just get a video stream of the software so decomps can't rip it apart and rewrite in rust. Or that copyright law will make 1:1 replicas of software illegal even if the code has been AI transformed.
I agree, this is the right direction to be thinking in. I’ve made a bunch of tools for myself with AI, been interested to see if I could release it, and found 10 open source projects that do some flavor of what I made, but with zero traction. I feel like the unlimited personalization of these types of apps is what’s going to prevent there from being “the free photoshop”, I think that everyone will just have their own personalized vibecoded photoshop that does exactly what they need.
Will all these platforms just disappear? I think that the real winners will adapt to this new AI world, evolving their platforms around agent-based workflows. Those who won’t will be just left behind (sadly)
That kinda depends on another manufacturer making a laptop with MacBook-level: battery life, screen, touchpad.
Which is apparently impossible.
Because of IP laws, I believe. Even China can't rip Apple's trackpad tech and copy it because they _really_ like having iPhones made and sold in China... can't rock that boat. But if the latter wasn't true, you'd have 500 brands with an Apple-like or better trackpad.
I don't know if I believe that. Nobody seems to be reaching for absolute top shelf quality anymore. You have Apple, then you have every other computer maker battling it out to try to win the "low cost plastic junk" market. A few of them have a "premium" tier which itself is still comparatively low-cost and sub-par.
Oh, I assume I'll still be using a Macbook.
Throwing my conspiracy theory in here...
Who does Jony Ive work for now?
Yea, but Jony don’t design chips.
But OpenAI does. If the models can vibe code software and operating systems and design 3D printed objects, what's stopping advances in material science to improve battery technology and beat Apple at their own game?
OpenAI Planning A 2028 Smartphone With Custom Chips
https://www.androidauthority.com/openai-smartphone-mediatek-...
People are already vibe-coding some of my extremely niche open source projects onto other platforms.