There Are Free, Open-Source Versions of Microsoft Office Apps Thanks to AI
Brandon Thomas, the experienced software engineer behind the AI-assisted reverse engineering effort to rebuild open-source versions of Adobe’s Creative Suite applications, including Photoshop, Premiere, and Lightroom, is setting his sights on another oft-maligned set of software: Microsoft Office.
As Thomas’ ArtCraft Discord has grown considerably with the release and publicity surrounding his Adobe clones, the developer has been taking requests for which software to reverse engineer next using Anthropic’s Opus 5.5 AI LLM. Unsurprisingly, many people, like they are sick of paying for Adobe’s software, are tired of paying for Microsoft Office, including Microsoft Word and Excel.
Thomas took the request and quickly started work on open-source Microsoft Office clones for macOS, Windows, and Linux. The Word clone, WordCraft, looks practically identical. The same goes for the Excel clone, GridCraft, and the PowerPoint look-alike, DeckCraft. Thomas is also working on an AutoCAD clone and a studio-grade audio mixer, SoundCraft.
In response to criticism that he is churning out AI slop, Thomas took to X to tout his credentials.
“My guy, I can code,” Thomas said in response to online criticism. “AI models enable me to work as an entire company. I’m doing 4x better than Google’s revenue per employee.”
“AI enables people to do far more. To have bolder ambition, to accomplish incredible tasks without tiring,” Thomas continues. “If you put down the hate and try the tools, you’ll find the energy to become the best version of yourself.”
In this case, the ambition is to reverse engineer functionally identical versions of premium, paid software built by people over decades and release them as free, open-source applications. That said, not everything here is free. There are subscriptions for using generative AI features inside the ArtCraft software suite.
For example, creating about 220 4K-quality Nano Banana Pro images requires a Max subscription, which is currently about $48 per month thanks to a 20% launch discount. This subscription nets users 413 seconds, or less than seven minutes, of generative video inside Seedance 2.0.
It’s hard to predict what’s next, but if paid software exists that enough people don’t want to pay for, it seems like a good candidate for Thomas’ AI-powered reverse engineering mission.
“Tell us what to rebuild next,” ArtCraft says.
Image creditsArtCraft. Header photo created using an asset licensed via Depositphotos.com.
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