Dave W Plummer: AI cloning of apps is piracy

Dave W Plummer's post describes a pipeline that takes an existing binary as input. A normal build goes from source code through a compiler and linker to an executable. His process instead goes from the executable, through extracted operations, into Rust, and back out to a new executable. He describes this as a one-shot result, which is what makes the claim notable: the AI did not merely assist with code, it reconstituted a working application from its compiled form.

He draws a line between two flows. A prompt that leads to code and then a binary is, in his framing, fine. A binary that leads to code and then another binary is a clone. He also notes he deliberately avoided using TMOG's application as a base, writing a large spec instead, and he says the app he used here was an in-the-box Windows application chosen as a proof of concept.

The stakes may hinge on whether courts treat a binary used as input as yielding an independent work. He raises Photoshop and a Mac-to-Windows port of Final Cut as larger asks, and says we are not far from them. Whether that scaling holds for much larger applications, and whether the legal line he proposes is adopted, is likely to shape how vendors respond.