Two bets on AI are running in opposite directions: that AI makes software worthless, and that AI companies won't earn enough to repay their debts. The first bet looks weak — the viral "free Photoshop" built with AI covers only about a third of professional work by its own roadmap, and Adobe just posted a record quarter even as its stock fell ~30%. The second bet has real evidence behind it: AI borrowing collapsed from a record $113B in June to $23B in September while the cost of insuring Oracle, CoreWeave and even Big Tech debt hit records. The video's conclusion is that AI can make code cheap to copy without making anyone rich — the value may be leaking out to users rather than landing with model makers or lenders.
- Brandon Thomas, a 15-year software veteran and ex-Square engineer, released seven free open-source Adobe clones built with Claude Opus, claimed he "one-shotted" Photoshop and that "software is over," then walked it back on Hacker News to 99% in months.
- PhotoCraft's own roadmap says it covers roughly 25–35% of what a professional needs daily, five of seven apps were still labeled in development as of October 11, and a Chinese outlet's test of smart filters found it matched Photoshop's output in only 5 of 30 cases.
- Free alternatives have existed for decades without killing paid software: GIMP since the mid-1990s, and LibreOffice had ~200 million users by 2018 against Microsoft Office's estimated 1.2 billion.
- What people actually pay for isn't the code — it's reproducibility, file compatibility, muscle memory, and a whole team, printer and client using the same tool; Adobe's record $6.76B quarter (creative pro segment up 13% to $4.65B) backs that up.
- AI-linked borrowing fell from a record $113 billion in June to $23 billion in September per Morgan Stanley, even though Morgan Stanley had predicted a second-half ramp-up; 2026 still totals about $466 billion versus $101 billion by this point last year.
- Prices say caution, not satiation: insuring $100 of Oracle debt hit a record $2.88/year, CoreWeave's went from $3.68 on October 6 to over $10 nine days later, its 2032 bonds trade at 77 cents, and CDS costs for Amazon, Alphabet, Meta and Nvidia also hit records.
- Broadcom CEO Hock Tan said "a lot of investors have no clue what they're investing in" and that AI investing is "almost like they're in a casino" — while Broadcom sits in a $60 billion financing package with Anthropic.
- Demand is real — Anthropic's Q3 revenue hit $16.8B (up 45%) and TSMC posted a sixth record quarter with profits up 69% — so the narrow question lenders are asking is whether renting out chips earns enough to repay what was borrowed to build around them.
It's the single concrete number that separates "looks like Photoshop" from "works like Photoshop," and it reframes the whole software-is-over argument.
When Photograph opens those files and redraws the picture, it matches Photoshop in only five cases out of 30. So it can read your settings perfectly. It knows you asked for a blur and how strong, but most of the time it cannot turn them into the picture Photoshop would have given you.
A clean logical test that distinguishes the innocent explanation for the lending slowdown from genuine lender nervousness, backed by the Oracle and CoreWeave CDS numbers.
If companies were borrowing less because they already had what they needed, then borrowing should be getting cheaper now or at least staying the same, right? Instead, it's actually getting more expensive.
A lot of investors have no clue what they're investing in... almost like they're in a casino.
Maybe software isn't over. Maybe what's over is the idea that writing the code was ever the valuable part.
AI can make code cheap without making anyone rich.