GitHub announces general availability of Copilot for Business

Microsoft-owned GitHub announced the general availability of GitHub Copilot for Business on February 14. In December 2022, GitHub first started the beta phase for the enterprise version of Copilot at a fee of $19 per month. As per the company, over 400 organisations are already using GitHub Copilot. 

GitHub has also announced new updates to Copilot that include artificial intelligence-based security filtering and a 44% improvement in the quality of the code suggested by the tool. GitHub said in a statement that unlike earlier, it will now allow businesses to sign up for Copilot even if they don’t use the GitHub platform. The company has also upgraded Copilot to a new Codex model for better code synthesis. Codex is a general-purpose programming model introduced by OpenAI on which Copilot is built.  

“In the coming years, we will integrate AI into every aspect of the developer experience – from coding to the pull request to code deployments for developers to build their best in a world where all organisations will be more dependent on their success than ever. GitHub Copilot for Business is the first stride in this future, a future that will push the boundaries for all developers,” said Thomas Dohmke, chief executive officer, GitHub. 

Copilot now comes with a Fill-In-the-Middle (FIM) feature for developers to craft better prompts for code suggestions without added latency. GitHub Copilot’s new update also reduces unwanted code suggestions by 4.5%. 

Further, the newly added AI-based vulnerability filtering system would block insecure coding patterns, targeting hardcoded credentials, SQL injections, and path injections. It is fast and can detect vulnerable patterns in incomplete code snippets, GitHub said in a blog. 

In the coming years, GitHub plans to ‘integrate AI into every aspect of the developer experience’, which ranges from coding and pull requests to code deployments.