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One AI story a week, read the way a data auditor reads it. The video, the evidence, and the one test to run.

Issue 006 · Failure Teardown · 26 Oct 2026

AI Can Now Clone Photoshop. Here's What Gets You Banned.

One researcher says OpenAI closed his account for local reverse engineering. The person who cloned Photoshop with Claude has faced nothing. Three rulebooks explain why.

What the file found

  1. Failed

    Adobe's Section 17 counts monitoring inputs and outputs to recreate a system as reverse engineering.

  2. Failed

    OpenAI's Daybreak, built for approved researchers, appears to have flagged one. He says he lost about $500.

  3. Held

    For Claude I found refusals, not confirmed bans. A refusal is a control doing its job.

  4. Failed

    On a company plan, one employee's AI experiment can put the company in breach of its contract.

The test to run this week

Check whether your acceptable use policy mentions AI-driven reverse engineering at all. Most were written before it existed.

Read the case file Watch the video · 9:23

Earlier briefs

All case files
  1. 005 A Trusted Security Company's Secret Key Was the Number 4When the evidence and the explanation don't match, re-perform the evidence instead of auditing the story. Failure Teardown
  2. 004 Grok Bot Wants a Photo of Your Credit Card. Who Pays If It Goes Wrong?A tweet is not a control, and on paper, today, the person who carries the risk is you. Failure Teardown
  3. 003 I Opened an AI Skill File. Check These 4 Things Before You Install OneThe test isn't whether a skill touches the internet. It's whether what it touches matches what it says it does. Build Lab
  4. 002 How to Audit a GenAI ImplementationWhatever the model says, the company said it. Audit Playbook
  5. 001 Claude Code Effort Levels: 0/5 to 5/5 With One Setting (and When It Backfires)More effort fixes missing edge cases. It does not fix a wrong approach. Build Lab

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