Developer Says AI Cloned a Windows App from Its Binary, Raising Piracy Questions

Summary

Developer Dave W Plummer describes an experiment in which an AI system used NSA’s Ghidra to reverse-engineer a complete Windows application into atomic actions, translate those actions into Rust logic, and compile a new application. He says the process produced a replacement with the same functionality and appearance while containing none of the original source code, only what he characterizes as the underlying logic. Plummer distinguishes this workflow from ordinary AI-assisted programming because the application binary itself is used as the input. He presents the process as “binary to operations to Rust to binary,” contrasting it with the conventional prompt-to-code-to-binary workflow. In his view, using a binary to generate an equivalent application does not create an independent work and should be treated as piracy, although he says the legal status may require court decisions. He contrasts the experiment with TMOG, for which he says he wrote a large specification rather than allowing an AI system to copy an existing application. He argues that the same approach could eventually be applied to larger products such as Photoshop or used to port software between platforms, though he acknowledges those tasks would be more difficult.