GitHub Expands Availability of AI Assistant Designed for Developers

GitHub has made Copilot Chat generally available for organizations and individuals, allowing GitHub Copilot users to benefit from natural language-powered coding at no additional cost.

As part of GitHub’s artificial intelligence (AI)-powered developer platform, Copilot Chat “enables the rise of natural language as the new universal programming language,” the Microsoft subsidiary said in a Friday (Dec. 29) blog post.

“Powered by GPT-4, GitHub Copilot Chat is a contextually-aware AI assistant designed specifically for developer scenarios,” the post said. “Teams of developers and individuals alike can prompt Copilot Chat in the natural language of their choice — from German to Portuguese and beyond — and receive real-time guidance without ever leaving the IDE [integrated development environment].”

Copilot Chat can help developers by explaining complex coding concepts, detecting security vulnerabilities and writing unit tests, according to the post.

It can be personalized to each developer and their coding practices, supporting their day-to-day workflow and helping them build software, the post said.

Users of Copilot Chat who were interviewed for the post said they use it to provide seamless translation between programming languages, get real-time answers to coding questions and gain instant refreshers on coding practices, per the post.

“As the global home for developers, we’re hyper-focused on how we can bring AI to the entire development lifecycle to help developers do the best work of their lives and have fun while doing it,” the post said. “From our own experience using Copilot Chat at GitHub, we’re confident it can do just that.”

Generative AI solutions are increasingly being added to enterprise developers’ toolkits to streamline software development workflows while making it easier for junior developers and those of all skill levels to write their own code and develop innovative products using text-based prompts, PYMNTS reported in in November.

For example, in August, Meta released a large language model (LLM) called Code Llama that can use text prompts to generate and discuss code.

“It has the potential to make workflows faster and more efficient for developers and lower the barrier to entry for people who are learning to code,” Meta said when announcing the launch of Code Llama.