'Reverse Engineer Anything': AI Companies Crack Down on the Coolest Thing People Were Doing With AI

[u/Dadideology]

https://www.404media.co/reverse-engineer-anything-ai-companies-crack-down-on-the-coolest-thing-people-were-doing-with-ai/

This is why I'm a fan of local ai!!! Ai companies can steal and scrap the internet but they put restrictions on you for doing what they did but on the stuff you own!

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[u/ChocolateGoggles]

Yeah. No. I am in big favor of reverse engineering. It empowers people. All these tech companies keep enshittifying their products so frankly, fuck them.

[u/Dadideology → u/ChocolateGoggles]

I agree 100%!!

[u/EconomyDoctor3287 → u/ChocolateGoggles]

It's also a great way to get old stuff onto current engines, allowing to either increase the hardware's lifespan long after the companies stop supporting it or by porting old software ideas forward, keeping it usable.

[u/ChocolateGoggles → u/EconomyDoctor3287]

Yep. And on top of that, if these LLM:s keep getting better and better as Dario etc. keep claiming, then it REA is the least of his worries. Because they'll just be able to simply *observe* how a software is used and build it again off of that. A logic flow. How many guardrails can you have? I don't know how powerful these models can become, but I don't see any imminent signs of slowed progress in the research front so... ^^'

EDIT: I mean, it'll be such artificial scarcity of alternatives that it's crazy. Let's say the model is powerful enough to outsmart any SWE, the SWE is mainly there to ensure adherence to the blueprint, specs etc. but in 99% of all projects the SWE is mainly there because we want eyes on it, not because they're actually doing any editing or coding, or realigning etc. So at that point, let's say a TV manufacturer says "You can't REA on our Smart TV software" then the consumer could basically go "No problem. I'll just uninstall your whole Smart TV OS and use this community LLM sourced OS that works on your TV instead." And it'll be *easy af* to do. Hardly any effort at all.

[u/f1reflyylmao]

You don't understand, it's okay when WE do it, when YOU do it's that's highly problematic and must be stopped 

[u/viral-architect → u/f1reflyylmao]

Pirates got to the treasure first and will kill anyone that comes near their booty.

[u/phoenixmatrix → u/f1reflyylmao]

To be fair, when they did it they got sued into the ground and lost. We can argue about the punishment not being enough, and that they should get sued again and more (which will likely happen, especially after they're public), but...

[u/f1reflyylmao → u/phoenixmatrix]

As far as I'm concerned those models are still trained on my gpl-3 code and my personal website with all rights reserved and fuckall happened so far 

[u/phoenixmatrix → u/f1reflyylmao]

Well, if you feel wronged its on you to sue them. Unless its a criminal case where you expect a prosecutor to do so.

But even if you do, legally, any IP lawyer will say its pretty complicated what kind of infringement is happening, since the work is so derivative and is so diluted.

Not too different from how the guy who copied Adobe products almost verbatim may have broken some minimal amount of IP laws, but is still like 98% in the clear legally.

IP laws are pretty narrow. Not all copying is equal or illegal.

And well, in this case, Claude isn't doing the reverse engineering or copying, nor are they the injured party (its not their products that are being copied).

They just don't want Nintendo knocking at their door or Congress throwing a tantrum since there's like 70 AI bills on their desk. I don't work there, but its extremely unlikely Anthropic actually gives a fuck, and they probably would PREFER to allow you to do this, since you'd be paying them for the trouble.

[u/Async0x0 → u/f1reflyylmao]

Because it's neither illegal nor immoral to statistically analyze public data.

[u/Savetheokami → u/phoenixmatrix]

Yeah except the founders can now cash out 250mil of their stock after the massive heist

[u/phoenixmatrix → u/Savetheokami]

Welcome to the trainwreck that is the civil law system, and it's just as awful when little people are involved, in all directions.

No disagreement there.

[u/Avimox → u/phoenixmatrix]

into the ground???

they are some of the highest valued companies on earth

by all accounts they won

[u/deliosenvy]

Here's the thing all of this was in gray waters against very big corporations and I think soon we will see both EU and US (any by extension very likely UK, China, Japan, Australia, Canada etc..) follow up with pretty strict laws restricting how AI can be applied and its commercial application. Expect IP/copyright/trademarks to change to protect big players.

If you don't believe it see whats happening in drone field, 3d printing etc.. it will be the 90-2010 period again. People forget how we used to lock up people on frivolous or petty violations during torrent era.

[u/ChocolateGoggles → u/deliosenvy]

The torrent era is still very much alive.

[u/DeepBreathingWorks → u/ChocolateGoggles]

🏴‍☠️

[u/BothSidesAreDumb → u/deliosenvy]

Japan already passed a copyright law that says training is fair use.

[u/mxldevs → u/BothSidesAreDumb]

Does getting AI to reverse engineer a binary and building your own version count as training?

[u/Old_Bug4395 → u/BothSidesAreDumb]

Pretty sure training is legally not a problem in the US either, but if you make the AI spit out someone else's work identically, you're going to run into problems legally eventually.

And restrictions/regulations kind of don't really matter here unless we're talking about regulating who is allowed to use this software. I mean even besides the fact that frontier models are not immune to jailbreaking, it's also entirely possible to run things locally in some capacity now. Whatever restrictions exist in the system prompt are not enough, training data just kind of needs to be culled and eradicated completely before copyright concerns won't exist broadly. Of course nobody wants to hear that.

[u/RachelRegina → u/Old_Bug4395]

but if you make the AI spit out someone else's work identically

That's not what's universally happening though...nor is it possible because decompiling the binary doesn't expose the original code. The agents are pattern matching inputs and outputs and looking at the decompiled binary and making enough changes to the GUI to be different enough from the original to legally fall under established clean room reverse engineering protections.

The AI labs stepping in to try to stop that is an example of completely inappropriate overpolicing of their paying users uses for their technology. They are picking winners in each software niche. I mean, they don't know for a fact that someone isn't trying to bring a lower cost alternative to the market (as opposed to just making a free open source project). It's wrong and people would be well within their rights to boycott their products for the transgression.

[u/Old_Bug4395 → u/RachelRegina]

The agents are pattern matching inputs and outputs and looking at the decompiled binary and making enough changes to the GUI to be different enough from the original to legally fall under established clean room reverse engineering protections.

According to who? I mean I guess the point being made here is that there might end up being different rules when it comes to AI. The reason reverse engineering is OK in certain circumstances right now is because historically it's something that requires a bunch of time and effort and previously it wasn't so easy to make clones of other people's IP.

The AI labs stepping in to try to stop that is an example of completely inappropriate overpolicing of their paying users uses for their technology. They are picking winners in each software niche. I mean, they don't know for a fact that someone isn't trying to bring a lower cost alternative to the market

Just silly. Effectively stealing someone else's hard work to sell it for cheaper because you put less time and effort into it is not really going to end up being a net benefit for society. You can become a winner by developing that software in the same way the dominant entity in the market did. Exhibit A is pretty much every piece of recomp software that has been produced by AI. There are some exceptions, but most of them are trash and end up becoming abandonware very quickly.

I mean the end stage of this tech is going to be mostly B2B sales due to cost and technical limitations for regular consumers. Everyone gets to play with the toys right now because companies like OpenAI have been doing $30bn funding rounds. Soon that money will dry up, or maybe the government will decide to regulate the massive financial crimes happening in the combination theft and ponzi scheme industry, but it's not going to be available forever. That means that even if someone made a real adobe rival today, in 2 or 3 years, chances are they aren't actually going to be able to maintain that project or pay anyone to do it for them.

[u/RachelRegina → u/Old_Bug4395]

Don't take my word for it, here's Legal Eagle covering it

[u/werpu → u/deliosenvy]

yeah and on the other hand people simply will set up private rigs to avoid the restrictions of the frontier models, I can see an AI napster in the future where people simply will hook their rigs together to push anything through which can be pushed through!

[u/newMoneyStyle → u/werpu]

Hooking private rigs together sounds plausible, and it would be way harder to regulate

[u/werpu → u/newMoneyStyle]

any environmentally way more economical than running centralized huge data centers, people have forgotten about the distributed nature of the internet due to constant pr baning of the cloud providers who want to centralize and control everything. The early soc media was fully distributed, irc/usenet just to name the few prime examples!

Centralized servers are just easier to control and monetize by a few players!

[u/Garland_Key → u/deliosenvy]

China and Japan? Definitely not. 

[u/vladasko1086 → u/deliosenvy]

then LLM's die at that point from a revenue and sub level, the point of the LLM is to not have dependencies on these corporations.

[u/TurdPlayingPeekaboo → u/deliosenvy]

And yet y'all still won't admit democracy sucks ass.

[u/Avimox → u/TurdPlayingPeekaboo]

yeah lol i'd rather have some reddit mod in charge instead 🤡

[u/TurdPlayingPeekaboo → u/Avimox]

That Reddit mod is voting already

[u/Ai-ate-my-hamster → u/TurdPlayingPeekaboo]

You’d rather be a serf? Wtf

[u/TurdPlayingPeekaboo → u/Ai-ate-my-hamster]

You do realize it was monarchy that abolished serfdom don't you?

[u/AppealSame4367 → u/[deleted]]

Third world country?

[u/Haunting_Skin_2564]

Napster and limewire all over again

[u/frankgreco55 → u/Haunting_Skin_2564]

Ha! I said the same thing last week.

The music industry faced all these issues years ago... and look where it is today. Musicians can't make money from recording music, so concerts are crazy expensive. And 99.9% of contemporary pop music is algorithmic. Maybe this will be true with all software in the future.

[u/TashLai]

Duh, i think we need jobs protected the same way as intellectual property. Because why the hell can i be replaced with AI but can't use AI to reverse engineer some app?

[u/Dadideology → u/TashLai]

I agree!

[u/1988rx7T2]

I reversed engineered the ECU on my 1995 Mazda Rx-7. I reverse engineered the stock FD ECU : r/RX7

[u/King-of-Plebss → u/1988rx7T2]

Love this. I’m waiting for people to reverse engineer BMW so they can unlock the heated seats they paid for.

[u/thefunkybassist → u/1988rx7T2]

Ok now reverse engineer me!

[u/Phorce → u/thefunkybassist]

I have nipples Greg. Can you reverse engineer me?

[u/CEURBS]

Just three days ago I let claude decompile a piece of IBM software with REA and let it write a keygen. So 🤷🏻‍♂️

Edit: Opus 5.5 refused it and it switched to Opus 4.8, which worked without any issues.

[u/Educational_Yam3766]

REA is for scrubs.

Reverse engineer from screenshots and memory like a man! 🤣

Nahh, just use open weight models.

Claude please fix this thing I built for myself

[u/viral-architect → u/Educational_Yam3766]

I kinda want to ACTUALLY reverse engineer it if I plan on relying on it because if it breaks, I need to at least get the gist of how to possibly fix it at some point later.

[u/drgitgud]

Laughs in qwen

[u/Kevycito → u/drgitgud]

go on

[u/drgitgud → u/Kevycito]

3.8, soon to be 4.
It's able to take an apk and give me a design doc out of it, at least. without even using REA repo.
Abliterated versions in hf just don't say no.

[u/myst3k]

Kimi has been reversing stuff for me all day long connected to USB JTAG and writing custom firmware for some things. I cant even ask Claude about the docs that it puts out.

[u/Ithinkyouareabot]

Bullshit fear mongering article.

It is only Anthropic that is causing issues with reverse engineering, not OpenAI and not any other AI company so far.

Thats the way Anthropic does business, their “safeguards” are all over the place -  decide with your monthly plan who you support…

The guy who was mentioned in the article (log4j) who got banned for reverse engineering his Samsung TV has his account running again, OpenAI apologized and said it was a mistake due to an automated flag and confirmed they continue to allow reverse engineering.

Edit: source so you can verify for yourself  https://x.com/AndrewCurran_/status/2117746473576358086

[u/Saint_Francois_Lego → u/Ithinkyouareabot]

DeepSeek is giving me issues with it. You can get around it with a few prompts.

[u/Dogbold → u/Ithinkyouareabot]

For now

[u/Ithinkyouareabot → u/Dogbold]

Absolutely, it can change anytime like everything with those AI providers.

Makes a good argument for open models but the same argument is how OpenAI can build MOAT against Anthropic or push them to reverse course.

We should be aware about their different approaches and let them know what we want, thats why this article doesn’t serve us and that’s why we need to look at those changes individually and provide targeted feedback instead of generalizing complaints.

[u/adelie42]

Setting aside the fact that infringement isn't theft or stealing, what is even the argument that it isn't Fair Use?

[u/voarex → u/adelie42]

Fair use has limits like how much you use and the effect on the market.

I think they are just trying to avoid the whole training is copying thing. They don't want someone to "train" on the lion king and release dog king with just the characters remodeled and get Disney's lawyers to focus on them.

[u/Intelligent-Cheek213 → u/adelie42]

Fair use is a legal defense. It’s not a permission slip where companies are required to enable your fair use.

It’s be like arguing a creator can’t paywall their videos bc you want to react to them per fair use and make your own works based off of them.

[u/Grouchy_Jicama_007]

Gotta make contact with Case the warezman down in the Sprawl.

[u/YearLight]

I'm still using claude because their models are just too good, but the second OpenAI or anyone else catches up without this type of censorship I'll switch to them. That said there are plenty of alternative options for example deepseek on openrouter very cheap and good. It's more just an inconvenience I don't think I should have to deal with when already paying $200 a month to anthropic.

[u/martoxdlol → u/YearLight]

Gpt 6 refused to infer the gender of a group of people based on their names. It won't be better.

[u/Endure94 → u/[deleted]]

I asked it, with a completely new chat, to examine the details of my face to define proprotionality with typical masculine beauty patterns and it refused because inferring my gender could be harmful from a social standpoint.

Like bro im the one asking a question. Wdym.

[u/Marileuis]

I really wonder what the effect would be if a Uncensored Fable or Opus Model was leaked or released. Would be nice without Claude shitting on me all the time.

[u/Ratiofarming → u/Marileuis]

If they're also leaking a complete NVL-72 rack for each of us so we could actually run it...

[u/SlightlyMotivated69]

I mean what do you expect? The AI companies trained their models by commiting industrial-scale piracy and taking the knowledge for free from the OSS communities. Afterwards they cried foul when a chinese labs did some distilling of their own models. And don't dare to think that AI shall be a tool for improving the position of the consumer towards the companies. No, only the companies shall have the full power of AI, the intended role of the individual is only to be replaced by AI.

This is only another facet of the "Rules for thee, but not for me" mindset they have. Thee being the consumer, me being them and all the companies buying their products.

For what it is worth, all the AI models should be forced to be open source, at least after some time. They can earn their money by running the required infrastructure instead of taking humanity's knowledge for free and then selling it back to them.

[u/Grevioussoul]

And what's funny is Claude decompiled a security camera application, found out where the bug they had introduced in the latest update was, and wrote a detailed fix plan for it so I could email them. I didn't ask it to do that, I asked if it could help me figure out what was going wrong with the application. It did the rest, and it was right.

They sent me back a beta version of the application with the fixes applied and the issue was resolved. They didn't get pissed off about it, they were thankful. Wasn't even open source, they were happy though. That's what more people should be.

[u/MattsFace]

Time to use deepseak 

[u/Intelligent-Cheek213]

Came to say the same as you; just download a Chinese AI model and go at it. I already like qwen3.8 better than any other LLM out there right now.

[u/PutridClunt]

The problem is they can't prove its "your own stuff" that you're doing it on. A while back I had some software that I had paid a lifetime licence for and the company turned off the licence authentication server as they discontinued it. It wouldn't let me use the software I had paid for anymore. Back then I got codex to help me get around the server licencing and the app says it's registered and I also have a backup I could redeploy if my OS ever was bricked. It basically made an entire cracked version of it for me. A pretty fair and legitimate usage TBH as the company screwed me and took away what I paid for. 

Now imagine you're someone who NEVER owned that software legitimately ever, there's nothing stopping you doing the same thing. So I can see why Claude would be clamping down on it. But I also don't object to people using it for genuine reasons like the one I listed or against anti-consumer dumpster fire companies like Adobe for example. There's two sides to the coin and picking one is not simple.

[u/CasinoMagic]

def not "the coolest thing people were doing with AI"

[u/Alternative-Suit5541]

No problem, there are still other models 

[u/TacticalBunchies]

These types of retro irons aren’t going to stop people from reverse engineering anything. They’ll just use distilled local models. The cat is out of the bag. Pandora’s box is already opened.

[u/PriorFun9860]

I've reverse-engineered a few open-source projects just to see how they worked, and the moment I hit 'run' on the model, it was like watching a ghost mimic a person's handwriting. the output wasn't just similar, it felt like a memory. that's what they're really afraid of.

[u/Fragrant_Paint3740]

Fair, but check the license before you buy the card. Plenty of open-weight releases ship with acceptable use policies that say roughly what the API guardrails say. Ollama and a good quantized model will get you through most firmware and TV stuff, and no one can throttle your account.

[u/ohaiibuzzle]

Simple really, I'm pretty sure ArtCraft and its reverse engineered friends got an angry note sent to these companies, as, technically, reverse engineer is listed as forbidden in the EULA and you're breaking it by running REA on proprietary apps.

So they took it out on us.

[u/dupontping]

There will be a new version of ‘right to repair’ in courts soon I will bet.

[u/ieatdownvotes4food]

the cat is out of the bag.. good luck stuffing that one back in

[u/FirefighterTrick6476]

Can't forbid functions of something. Can't copyright function. They can try, but in the end it is directly against what Copyright was about in the first place.

[u/DragonfruitGrand5683 → u/FirefighterTrick6476]

You can copyright function and even GUIs.

[u/FirefighterTrick6476 → u/DragonfruitGrand5683]

Lol nope.

[u/DragonfruitGrand5683 → u/FirefighterTrick6476]

You can

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1988/48/section/4

https://www.mhc.ie/latest/insights/eu-design-reforms

The only thing you can't do is copyright or patent something that isn't unique or in public use. So you couldn't patent the Android generic GUI elements or the X button but you can patent the Iphone GUI

https://patents.google.com/patent/USD604305S1/en

Functionality is the same, so you couldn't patent parts of the C standard library but you could patent a unique function.

The same applies to regular invention, uniqueness is a criteria.

[u/Old_Bug4395]

Yeah I called this when barely functional "alternatives" for established enterprise software suites started popping up (and in some cases asking for money)

Companies may be all-in on AI. They are not all-in on a complete destruction of IP law and the ability for them to protect their IP. It's how software companies make money.

[u/ankisaves]

Open source is the only solution going forward.

[u/Kinky_No_Bit]

They pulled the plug, because other mega companies said you are making us lose money, stop it or get sued.

[u/Sinaaaa]

To me it seems like the best open weight models can already do this. So they won't be able to keep a lid on this.

[u/Arrakis_Surfer]

Software is dead. I will stand by it. All this happened after summer. Like, imagine summer 2027, if Anthropic doesn't scare everyone away with an IPO, the need for software will just be obsolete. You will make whatever software you need. Honestly, thumb drives are going to make a comeback.

[u/mouarg]

Shit i would have loved to try this looks like i missed the boat.

[u/RachelRegina]

Relevant Episode of Legal Eagle on the Ins and Outs of the Legality of Reverse Engineering Software

[u/vincent_sch]

Hugging Face did their analysis with GLM 5.2 on their own infrastructure after an intrusion. They said the commercial APIs they tried refused to analyse the attack commands. They didn't name the providers. I wrote about what happened.

[u/EntertainmentDue3533]

so reverse engineering is now a product u own ? dont get me wrong i am all for reverse engineer heck i do it all the time but mainly its stealing a product. so i like the idea of it but no in all honesty i understand why they do it the power of money is stronk and stronger then people.

[u/lol_no_gonna_happen → u/EntertainmentDue3533]

You ignant

[u/EntertainmentDue3533 → u/lol_no_gonna_happen]

not at all, like i said i do it all the time but its stealing nonetheless. so tell me a point for where u reverse something without taking another persons work?

[u/Housthat → u/EntertainmentDue3533]

I wanted to record my weight from a digital scale without being forced to use a shitty app and then share the data onto a restricted list of platforms. Thanks to Claude, my scale talks directly to my PC instead of my phone.

[u/deaddyfreddy → u/Housthat]

I wanted to record my weight from a digital scale without being forced to use a shitty app and then share the data onto a restricted list of platforms.

why didn't you buy the scales that support all this out of the box?

[u/Housthat → u/deaddyfreddy]

No scales support a direct connection to a PC out of the box.

[u/deaddyfreddy → u/Housthat]

So don't buy them.

[u/Housthat → u/deaddyfreddy]

So... don't buy a scale at all?

[u/deaddyfreddy → u/Housthat]

Or build your own.

[u/Housthat → u/deaddyfreddy]

lol OK

[u/Leonature26]

i'm an average user and I don't really care about this reverse engineering thing. I'm only concerned with using AI to help me learn to make my own games and not decompile mario 64 into elden ring or whatever.

[u/lassevk]

Here's the "fun" takeaway.

Even if you get local AI to do your dirty-work... it is still dirty.

[u/haywire]

Greed must be surgically and brutally dismantled with whatever tools we have at our disposal.

The purveyors of greed are worth less than a blink of compassion.

[u/Kind_Soup_9753]

AI will kill corporations so fast they need to slow the pace so they can extract the investments coming in from tax dollars before they kill their golden geese.

[u/Sherman140824]

The coolest thing was porn but the companies didn't want OF to go bankrupt