GitHub and OpenAI team up on Copilot, an AI pair programmer

Code smart, not hard.

What you need to know

• GitHub and OpenAI have teamed up to develop Copilot.
• It will help do the tedious coding work for developers.
• It is not designed to replace humans.

GitHub and OpenAI are partnering up to ensure coders have an easier future ahead wherein they're not even needed in order to write certain code. Via the partnership, a new technology, dubbed Copilot, is being developed to help speed along programmers' endeavors via AI-written code.

Here's a bit of what GitHub's Copilot page has to offer in terms of explaining the AI programmer's functions: "GitHub Copilot is powered by Codex, the new AI system created by OpenAI," the page reads. "GitHub Copilot understands significantly more context than most code assistants. So, whether it's in a docstring, comment, function name, or the code itself, GitHub Copilot uses the context you've provided and synthesizes code to match."

That larger knowledge base is what GitHub says separates Copilot from other superficially similar programs. GitHub also has a detailed breakdown of what Copilot can do, to further underscore its utilities. Here's what it can do:

• Write a comment describing the logic you want, and let GitHub Copilot assemble the code for you.
• GitHub Copilot works great for quickly producing boilerplate and repetitive code patterns.
• Import a unit test package, and let GitHub Copilot suggest tests that match your implementation code.
• Want to evaluate a few different approaches? GitHub Copilot can show you a list of solutions. Use the code as provided, or edit it to meet your needs.

Copilot's not quite ready for primetime yet, but you can read the testimonials from developers on the GitHub page linked above. Furthermore, you can also sign up for the technical preview if you don't want to wait for a public release.