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Comment by muttantt | Hacker News Reader

Well, there goes Andrew Mason's startup Descript...

Descript was the first thing I thought of. Since it does audio and video, I am not sure this can be called a competitor. Descript has such a head start with features I don't think Adobe will be able to catch up.

I wonder if they made Descript an offer before starting this project. Although, the base problem of editing audio or video with text isn't that difficult. They probably thought it could easily be cloned. The devil is in the details however, and the rabbit hole runs deep.

> Descript has such a head start with features I don't think Adobe will be able to catch up.

What specifically is Descript doing that Adobe couldn't do relatively easily, or isn't doing already in its other NLE products (Premiere, Audition, Rush, After Effects)?

I think everything associated with their lyrebird acquisition. I think it would probably not be as simple as hiring decent engineers to throw at the problem when it comes to Descripts machine learning offerings.

Adobe already has a big AI research team and Shasta is already incorporating AI features. Check out http://shasta.adobe.com/enhance

inb4 Adobe continues their streak of demonstrating they're incapable of building software and spends another couple of billion to buy out the competition.

it's not like it's a particularly out there idea, anything logical will have competition. I welcome that a large company with resources builds to market useful tools that I can expect to exist beyond the next round of funding.

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