GitHub and OpenAI are teaming up on Copilot, an AI pair programmer

Code smart, not hard.

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What you need to know

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 whatGitHub’s Copilot pagehas 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:

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 alsosign up for the technical previewif you don’t want to wait for a public release.

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Robert Carnevale is the News Editor for Windows Central. He’s a big fan of Kinect (it lives on in his heart), Sonic the Hedgehog, and the legendary intersection of those two titans, Sonic Free Riders. He is the author ofCold War 2395. Have a useful tip? Send it to robert.carnevale@futurenet.com.