Vibe-coding a Word clone? Your AI prompt could be a legal problem
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Summary
A month ago, another wall fell to AI. Frontier models from Anthropic and OpenAI are now capable of “reverse engineering” popular software like Photoshop and Microsoft Word into free versions. Does that mean you can do it, too, with your own apps? Not without a lot of time, effort, and tokens. But your legal right to reverse-engineer software hasn’t been tested yet, and experts say you’re pretty much free to experiment as you wish—with some common-sense limitations. By now, most people are at least familiar with ChatGPT and Claude, and have tried them out with basic questions, chats, and tasks. Software developers who use such models for agentic coding report that they’ve become more like project managers than coders. And now, instead of coding their own personal apps, they’re getting AI to do it for them . In fact, that’s usually what happens when I ask friends what they’re vibe-coding for: either some hyper-specific personal utility, or replicating paid services. That was the whole point of apps like PhotoCraft (a “reverse-engineered” version of Photoshop) and WordCraft (ditto, but for Microsoft Word) which developer Brandon Thomas reportedly described as “clean-room replacements” for both of those applications. Normally, reverse engineering would be the domain of an intellectual property lawyer, not a vibe coder like you or me. But as AI has made vibe-coding accessible to average users, it’s worth knowing what legal risks you face in doing so. PhotoCraft is a “clean room” reimplementation of Adobe Photoshop, its creator claims. GitHub / StoryTold Are there risks? In the real world, not really… unless you want to start sharing or selling your replicated creations. “As with most things, the risk of legal trouble is low for people experimenting privately or building tools for their own uses, but increases quickly if you distribute or sell the things you make that way,” Mitch Stoltz, the competition and IP litigation director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said via email. Clark Asay, a professor of law at Brigham Young University and author of Independent Creation in a World of AI , also doubted that you’ll have any trouble. “I don’t think there’s any real threat at that stage,” he wrote in an email. “Technically, you could still be violating someone’s patent if you vibe-code a utility app that someone’s patent reads on. But no one is ever going to discover your use in this situation or, if they did, sue you.” Lazy LLMs could be your legal problem It’s easy enough to vibe-code an application that can run on your PC—simply open up a new chat within an LLM (coders prefer Anthropic’s Claude, but I’ve used OpenAI’s ChatGPT) and ask it to write it. The process is simpler if the application’s function is simple. An app that creates a random butterfly to fly around your Windows desktop will be simpler to describe and code than your own voice transcription application. The output generally includes both the app plus a separate file containing the source code. You’re almost certain to never have any issues when vibe-coding a simple utility. But reverse engineering a paid service? Maybe. It depends on how you prompt the AI. It’s probably not surprising that lawyers would favor specific, precise language. But LLMs can also be precise… and lazy. Instead of generically describing your app as a “voice transcription application,” be careful to avoid describing the app as a “clone” or a “reverse-engineered version” of a named application, such as Otter.ai’s transcription app. It’s possible (though unlikely) that the LLM was trained on the commercial app’s source code. However, if you mention cloning the Otter app specifically, “the AI will probably resort to Otter to figure out how to clone it more efficiently,” Asay said. The Otter.ai app. Jonathan Band, the owner of Jonathan Band PLLC (PolicyBandwidth) law firm as well as the author of the Interfaces on Trial series, agreed. “If the AI reverse engineers a particular piece of code, the AI is far more likely to end up copying some of that code, or at least its structure, sequence, and organization (SSO), which may be protected expression,” he wrote in an email. “And the line between protected expression and unprotectable idea is far from clear.” Instead, describe what features you want the app to include, without referring back to the original application. In software development, a “clean room” implementation uses two teams of software engineers; one to break down what an app does, and an independent second team that writes the software based upon the first team’s description. In vibe coding, you take on the role of the first team. Using this “clean room” implementation to duplicate the function of an existing application isn’t illegal and is the source of a lot of important innovation, said EFF’s Stoltz. But the so-called look and feel of that app may also get you in trouble. That includes the user interface, which is more important than you might think. From my own experience and in chats with friends, defining and implementing vibe-coded features is easy enough—say what you want and the AI obliges. But aligning, sizing, and coloring a single button can take far more time than you might expect, and it’s very tempting to tell or even show the AI to do it the way a specific commercial application does. An early (quasi-functional) version of my own voice transcription app, built locally without any references to Otter or any other voice transcription service in the prompting. Don’t reference another app’s interface. “That kind of copying can be subtle but still legally actionable,” said Stoltz. “Including screenshots of the application in the prompt to the code generator might increase the chances of the LLM copying some copyrightable aspect of the original, because user interfaces can be covered by copyright.” Asay agreed. “I think this increases legal risk because the AI will seek to be as efficient as possible and may copy in substantial form copyrightable elements of the user interface.” Finally, if you’ve subscribed to a subscription service, its terms of service may attempt to legally prevent you from reverse engineering it. Selling your vibe-coded app When I was a teenager, I and many others recorded music off of the radio, creating our own mixtapes for ourselves and our friends. I personally believe that personal use is the most ethical for vibe-coded apps that might compete with existing commercial applications. But what about sharing or selling your vibe code? Reports claim that the number of (probably) AI-coded games have soared, even as Anthropic’s Claude is now cracking down on specifically “reverse engineering” games . (Productivity apps may still be open season.) Sharing the code with friends and colleagues is one thing—selling it is another. “Once you go commercial, patent owners become more interested,” Asay said. “Of course, if you are a small-time enterprise, no one will probably care about what you are doing. But once you start having commercial success, then patent owners may take notice. In patent law, independent invention is no defense to patent infringement, so it doesn’t really matter how you came up with the app if a patent’s claims cover something in the app.” So far, Adobe has not filed suit against ArtCraft’s Thomas, and probably won’t, according to legal firm Falcon, Rappaport, and Berkman. While you can sell your AI vibe-coded apps, there are online repositories like TinyToolTown where you can download them for free. “These projects are mostly free and run by individuals, so there’s little to recover and a real risk of public backlash, and incumbents may be wary of testing an untried theory and ending up with a bad precedent,” the company wrote . It’s hard to believe that your vibe-coding effort wouldn’t fall into the same category. Just remember that discovering and fixing bugs is easier when you’re the only client. What to do when vibe-coding apps If you’re thinking of experimenting with vibe-coded apps, go for it. Just follow these best practices to stay safe: Design your own apps for personal use only. When prompting, describe the function of the application without mentioning any existing commercial alternatives. As tempting as it might be, use an original design for your user interface instead of modeling it after an existing commercial application. The likelihood of a vibe-coded application inadvertently using copyrighted code is low, and the chance it will be discovered is even lower, so as long as you’re smart about it, you should be safe. Further reading: Vibe coding taught me how hard real coding is
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