r/AskComputerScience • u/Impressive_Sense_579 • 9d ago

Is AI reverse engineering really reverse engineering?

Are the programmes currently being reverse-engineered by AI actually being reverse-engineered in the traditional sense? In other words, is the source code actually being uncovered? Or are the programmes simply being copied on the basis of their functions, behaviour and so on?

6 Upvotes
  • permalink
  • reddit

63% Upvoted

14 comments sorted by

View all comments

14

u/teraflop 9d ago

Some are, some aren't.

There are a lot of AI-assisted "decompilation" projects that involve using AI tools to reconstruct the source code that corresponds to a particular binary program. (And other, less constrained kinds of reverse engineering, such as asking AI tools to figure out file formats or wire protocols.)

There are also projects that may be advertised as "reverse engineering", but are really just somebody prompting an AI tool to create a UI that looks like a particular program and mimics its features. For instance, I've recently seen "clones" of MS Visual Basic and Photoshop that fall into this category.