However, there are concerns about the profitability of Copilot, which reportedly loses an average of $20 per user per month. There are also concerns about the quality and security of AI-generated code, with research suggesting that AI-powered coding tools can lead to more mistakes and security issues. Despite these concerns, a recent poll found that 44% of developers use AI tools in their development process, and 26% plan to do so soon. GitHub believes that the combination of human and AI will be superior to either alone, and hopes that the Workspace can help to reduce the complexity of coding tasks and allow developers to express their creativity more freely.
Key takeaways:
- GitHub announced Copilot Workspace, an AI-powered development environment, at its annual GitHub Universe conference. The tool is designed to help developers brainstorm, plan, build, test and run code in natural language.
- Copilot Workspace is an evolution of GitHub’s AI-powered coding assistant Copilot, building on recently introduced capabilities like Copilot Chat, which lets developers ask questions about code in natural language.
- The tool is underpinned by OpenAI’s GPT-4 Turbo model and can build a plan to fix a bug or implement a new feature, drawing on an understanding of the repo’s comments, issue replies and larger codebase.
- Despite concerns about the quality and security of AI-generated code, a significant number of developers are using AI tools in their development process, and this number is expected to grow in the future.