GitHub launches Copilot for Business

Code repository hosting service GitHub has launched GitHub Copilot for Business, a variation of the company’s popular AI developer tool.

GitHub Copilot works with code and natural language prompts to offer multiple suggestions that can be easily accepted or rejected.

The new GitHub Copilot for Business adds capabilities including a more powerful AI model, AI-based security vulnerability filtering and support for VPN proxies. Licences can be purchased online even by companies that don’t use the GitHub platform for their source code.

The extension has been improved with a new paradigm called fill-in-the-middle, which offers developers better craft prompts for code suggestions. GitHub has also launched an AI-based vulnerability filtering system designed to block insecure coding patterns in real time.

GitHub Copilot, an extension to the GitHub editor, was first designed in partnership with OpenAI in 2021. GitHub Copilot draws context from a developer’s code to suggest new lines, functions, tests and even complex algorithms.

According to GitHub the tool is already generating an average of 46% of its developer users’ code, up from 27% in June. Nine in 10 users of GitHub Copilot already report completing tasks faster, with 75% of users reporting feeling more fulfilled and able to focus on more satisfying work.

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