Image: GitHub
Copilot, the AI assistant which writes 46pc of code on GitHub, is evolving with GPT-4 to help users across the development lifecycle.
Microsoft-owned GitHub is upgrading its AI-powered coding assistant Copilot by integrating it with OpenAI’s GPT-4, the company’s most advanced large language model.
GitHub CEO Thomas Dohmke wrote in a blogpost yesterday (22 March) that the adoption of OpenAI’s model will bring ChatGPT-like chat and voice options to Copilot, assisting developers with easy-to-access AI tools across the developer lifecycle.
Under the new vision for Copilot, which GitHub calls Copilot X, will now also be added to pull requests, the command line and docs to answer any questions developers may have on their projects.
“Copilot started a new age of software development as an AI pair programmer that keeps developers in the flow by auto-completing comments and code. But AI-powered auto-completion is just the starting point,” Dohmke wrote.
“Our R&D team at GitHub Next has been working to move past the editor and evolve GitHub Copilot into a readily accessible AI assistant throughout the entire development lifecycle.”
GitHub, which was acquired by Microsoft five years ago, first launched a preview of Copilot in June 2021 in collaboration with OpenAI. By October of that year, Copilot was helping to write 30pc of new code on the platform.
Now, Dohmke said Copilot is writing 46pc of code on GitHub and helps developers code up to 55pc faster. The company launched a series of updates to improve Copilot last month.
Meanwhile, Canva creates magic
Microsoft is not the only company overhauling its products by infusing them with AI.
Popular design platform Canva has just announced a host of new AI tools at its Create event today. Aimed at helping those with little to no professional experience in design, the AI tools include a new Magic Replace tool that can replace an asset across all designs with one click.
Magic Eraser, another AI tool added to the Canva suite of design products, can remove any part of an image that is unwanted without needed to manually ‘erase’ it from the image, while Magic Edit will allow a user to swap an object with a completely different one using generative AI.
A new content generation tool called Magic Write will also help users with tasks such as writing social media captions, profile bios and even poems or letters.
Canva’s new features may worry the likes of Adobe, which has also been exploring the potential of AI with its new Firefly family of products.
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