Google has partnered with online IDE developer Replit to integrate Replit’s AI-based code suggestion tool into its cloud platform in an attempt to challenge Microsoft’s GitHub Copilot.
GitHub Copilot is a programming tool powered by OpenAI’s Codex language model that provides code suggestions based on comments and functions entered by programmers, like a super auto-completion feature.
Now Google wants to get in on the action. Under its agreement with Replit, Google will give the startup access to its vast computing resources and custom AI models. In return, Google will host and make available Replit’s code editing software from the Google Cloud.
Specifically, Replit developers will get access to Google Cloud infrastructure, services and underlying models through Ghostwriter, Replit’s software development AI, while Google Cloud and Workspace developers will get access to Replit’s collaborative code editing platform access to Replit’s collaborative code editing platform.
Replit’s Ghostwriter code generator integrates directly into the company’s online browser-based IDE, which automatically completes code and responds to natural language queries, which Replit CEO Amjad Masad believes helps programmers be more productive and can help people more easily fix bugs and collaborate with colleagues.
Replit says it supports more than 20 million developers and claims that its Ghostwriter bot helps generate more than 30 percent of users’ code. Microsoft, meanwhile, is planning to upgrade its GitHub Copilot model to GPT-4.
AI programming tools have improved over time, and in addition to code completion, they can now generate code based on instructions in natural language text. These tools aren’t perfect, however, and even though they can help those with less programming experience write code, developers still need to have enough technical knowledge to determine if their output is correct.
