GitHub Copilot is an AI pair programmer designed to help developers write code faster and with less work.
It uses OpenAI Codex, a generative pretrained language model, to draw context from comments and code to suggest individual lines and whole functions instantly.
Copilot has been trained on natural language text and source code from publicly available sources, including code in public repositories on GitHub.
While it doesn’t write perfect code, it generates the best code possible given the context it has access to.
Copilot is available as an extension for Visual Studio Code, Visual Studio, Neovim, and the JetBrains suite of integrated development environments (IDEs).
It’s recommended to divide code into small functions, use meaningful names for function parameters, and write good docstrings and comments as you go to get the most out of Copilot.
Additionally, it’s always important to test, review, and vet the code suggested by Copilot. The transmitted Prompts and Suggestions are protected by encryption and access is strictly controlled.
GitHub Copilot does not own the code generated by it, and users are responsible for the code they write with its help.
Pricing: Paid, Free Trial Available
FAQ
Copilot is powered by Codex, a generative pretrained AI model created by OpenAI. It has been trained on natural language text and source code from publicly available sources, including code in public repositories on GitHub.
It won’t because the company ensures that neither your Prompts or Suggestions will be shared or used as suggested code for other users of GitHub Copilot.
GitHub will defend you as provided in the GitHub Copilot Product Specific Terms.
GitHub Copilot is a tool and doesn’t own the suggestions GitHub Copilot provides to you. You are responsible for the code you write with GitHub Copilot’s help.
You should test, review, and vet the code before pushing it to production, as you would with any code you write that incorporates material you did not independently originate.
Given public sources are predominantly in English, GitHub Copilot will likely work less well in scenarios where natural language prompts provided by the developer are not in English and/or are grammatically incorrect. Therefore, non-English speakers might experience a lower quality of service.
Copilot includes filters to block offensive language in the prompts and to avoid synthesizing suggestions in sensitive contexts.
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