Microsoft’s AI Copilot starts coding industry automation
When software developer Nikolai Avteniev got his hands on a preview version of Microsoft Corp.’s Copilot coding assistant in 2021, he quickly saw the potential.
Developed by Microsoft’s GitHub coding platform and based on a version of OpenAI’s generative artificial intelligence, the assistant wasn’t perfect and sometimes got things wrong. But Avteniev, who works for ticket seller StubHub, was surprised by how ably it finished lines of code with just a few prompts. All he had to do was press the tab key, and Copilot filled in the rest.
“Instead of using 15 keystrokes, it took three,” he recalled recently. “It was nice a little speed boost.”
Three years later, and now infused with the latest version of OpenAI’s GPT-4 technology, GitHub’s Copilot can do a lot more, including answering engineers’ questions and converting code from one programming language to another. As a result, the assistant is responsible for an increasingly significant percentage of the software being written and is even being used to program corporations’ critical systems.
Along the way, Copilot is gradually revolutionizing the working lives of software engineers—the first professional cohort to use generative AI en masse. Microsoft says Copilot has attracted 1.3 million customers so far, including 50,000 businesses ranging from small startups to corporations like Goldman Sachs, Ford and Ernst & Young. Engineers say Copilot saves them hundreds of hours a month by handling tedious and repetitive tasks, affording them time to focus on knottier challenges.
Acquired by Microsoft in 2018 for $7.5 billion, GitHub dominates its market and is betting Copilot has the AI horsepower to fight off rival services including Tabnine, Amazon’s CodeWhisperer and Google-backed Replit Ghostwriter. GitHub’s AI assistant is also a kind of beta test for a host of other Copilots that Microsoft is baking into Office, Windows, Bing and other business lines.
As is true with AI generally,
GitHub Copilot has limitations. Developers say it sometimes pulls up outdated code, provides unhelpful answers to questions and generates suggestions that are buggy or could infringe copyright. Because the tool is trained on public and open repositories of code, engineers run the risk of replicating security issues or injecting new ones into their work, particularly if they blindly accept Copilot’s recommendations.
GitHub emphasises that the tool is an assistant, not a substitute for human programmers, and has put the onus on customers to use it wisely. Robust guidelines are required to prevent lazy programmers from simply accepting what Copilot suggests, said GitHub CEO Thomas Dohmke. He expressed confidence that engineers would keep one another honest.*