Google Partners with AI Startup Replit to Take on Microsoft’s GitHub

tech.hindustantimes.com:

Alphabet Inc.'s Google is striking a partnership to combine its artificial intelligence language models with software from startup Replit Inc. that helps computer programmers write code, a bid to compete with a similar product from Microsoft Corp.'s GitHub and OpenAI.

Replit, which has 20 million users, said its Ghostwriter app will rely on Google's language-generation AI to improve its ability to suggest blocks of code, complete programs and answer developer questions. Google Cloud Vice President June Yang declined to specify which language AI products Replit will use, noting that it's a customized combination of systems that address different tasks like chat and code-generation.

Previously, Replit built the product with its own AI. Google “has much better technology than most people know,” Replit Chief Executive Officer Amjad Masad said in an interview. The startup will also expand its use of Google's cloud services and hopes the relationship with the tech giant will help it win over larger corporate customers — right now Replit's clients are largely individual developers and startups. Google also will distribute Replit's software as part of the partnership.

GitHub, which is wholly owned by Microsoft, last year released a product called Copilot, which suggests blocks of code as a software developer types, speeding up the process and automating rote or finicky coding tasks. The product, which has attracted 5,000 corporate customers and hundreds of thousands of programmers, is based on OpenAI's language-generating AI. GitHub last week announced that it's adding chat capabilities for answering software development questions. Amazon. com Inc.'s cloud-computing unit also sells a product in this category called CodeWhisperer.

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