Code generators are increasingly being used to assist developers, with tools like GitHub's Copilot and Amazon's AWS CodeWhisperer offering similar functionalities. However, GitHub and its parent company, Microsoft, along with OpenAI, are currently facing a lawsuit for alleged copyright infringement with Copilot, as the tool can reproduce licensed code.
Key takeaways:
- Meta has launched a tool called Code Llama, which is built on its Llama 2 large language model, to generate new code and debug human-written work. The tool is free for research and commercial use.
- Code Llama can create code from prompts or debug code when pointed to a specific code string. Meta also released Python-specialized and natural language instruction versions of Code Llama.
- Meta claims that Code Llama outperforms other publicly available large language models based on benchmark testing. The tool scored 53.7 percent on the code benchmark HumanEval and was able to accurately write code based on a text description.
- Other companies like GitHub, Amazon, and Google also have their own code-writing tools. However, GitHub's parent company, Microsoft, and OpenAI are currently facing a lawsuit for allegedly violating copyright law with their tool, Copilot.