Amid swathes of other software and hardware-related announcements, Google lifted the wraps off a new code editing tool at its annual I/O developers’ conference this May with the aim to take on GitHub Copilot.
The so-called Studio Bot is designed to generate and fix code, as well as answer questions about Android and Google Cloud services.
It has been built using the Codey model, which leans on the also new PaLM 2 LLM that got a shoutout at the event.
Google AI code generation assistant
Studio Bot is set to work with Java and Kotlin, specifically with the Android mobile OS in mind, and should be able to handle code-related questions and debugging, but there is one catch.
Google says that its tool is still in “very early days,” promising that it will get better with time, suggesting it may not quite be up to scratch just yet. While Copilot may not have anything to worry about in the immediate future, some US developers will be able to get early access to it in the Canary channel.
Google code and permissively licensed open-source code went into making the chatbot, and while Google says that users don’t need to share their own code for improving the model, it will learn from conversations.
More broadly, the entire event was dominated by countless AI announcements and namedrops, including new hardware which uses the company’s Tensor G2 chips designed with AI in mind.
Generative AI looks to be rolling out to more Google Workspace products, as well as Google search which promises to present users with an interactive summary in the oh-so-familiar search interface.
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