In the music technology world, people are having an absolute field day vibe-coding alternative firmwares for devices which have long since been abandoned by their manufacturers.. and it is GREAT!
There is a very exciting revolution happening with the M-VAVE FM1 synthesizer, which has been reverse engineered - and now folks are producing firmwares for it, at a rate of 1 or 2 each week - which radically extend its functionality and give it features NONE of us expected.
For a $60 device, this is phenomenal - and it is fair to say that the M-VAVE FM1 is probably the hottest ticket item in the music technology world, today - putting a lot of manufacturers on notice that either they properly support their locked down, closed-garden products, or the users will.
Truly phenomenal.
And, there are many more such examples: a new firmware for the Arturia MicroFreak, for example, which adds more and more synth engines not considered by Arturia for inclusion (for whatever arbitrary reasons), but definitely shoe-horn'ed into place by MicroFreak users. See also the quite revolution happening around Behringers' firmwares, which is teaching them quite the lesson. I predict either Big Music Tech is going to embrace this trend - and start releasing devkits and SDK's for their systems - or they are going to go the other way and start encrypting their firmware such that AI kiddies can't gain access .. but for the decades of stuff thats already out there, its fair game.
(Details here for those interested, in general, in how music tech is being hacked into oblivion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDmAvZKtqq8 .. and for details about the FM1 and all the amazing firmwares being produced for it by vibecoders, reverse engineers, and hackers alike, check https://old.reddit.com/r/MVaveFM1/)