Google partners with Replit to offer AI-driven alternative to GitHub Copilot. Image Credit: Google
Replit's Ghostwriter tool to be beefed up by Google's LLM tech
Alphabet, the parent company of Google, has formed a partnership with Replit, an AI start-up, to assist developers in creating and modifying code through generative AI, a move that will help the search company compete with a similar product from Microsoft's GitHub and OpenAI.
As part of the collaboration, Replit developers will get access to Google Cloud's infrastructure, services and foundational models through Ghostwriter, Replit's AI software development tool.
In return, Google Cloud and Workspace developers will be able to utilise Replit's collaborative code editing platform.
With over 20 million developers already using its products, Replit is among the rapidly expanding developer platforms. Its Ghostwriter tool enables users to generate code with ease through simple prompts.
Ghostwriter was launched in 2022 and fully integrated into Replit's browser-based integrated development environment (IDE) earlier this year.
According to Replit, Ghostwriter is responsible for generating over 30% of the code written by developers on the platform.
Replit said its Ghostwriter tool will rely on Google's language-generation AI to enhance its ability to recommend code blocks, complete programs, and respond to developers' queries.
This move can be seen as Google's effort to ramp up competition in the AI coding assistant market, which is presently led by Microsoft's GitHub Copilot.
Microsoft-owned GitHub launched Copilot last year. It proposes code blocks as a software developer types, thereby increasing efficiency and automating repetitive or complex coding tasks.
Copilot is based on OpenAI's language-generation AI and has garnered 5,000 corporate clients and hundreds of thousands of programmers.
As of last week, Copilot was responsible for writing 46% of the code on GitHub.
Last week, GitHub said it was enhancing its Copilot by incorporating OpenAI's GPT large language models, and adding text chat and voice support.
The system is now undergoing a significant change under the overarching 'Copilot X' name (which GitHub calls "a vision for the future rather than an available product").
Copilot now possesses the ability to identify the code that a developer has typed, as well as any error messages that appear. The chat functionality is integrated into the IDE.
Copilot Chat provides developers with in-depth analysis and explanations of code blocks' intended functions, generating unit tests, and even suggesting solutions for bugs.
Replit said in its blog post that while the newest LLM chat apps can create code for complete programs using basic natural language prompts, even the most robust LLMs cannot execute code on their own.
"Standalone chat LLMs do not have a project's context. They require developers to copy and paste code from where they work to the chat app. This leads to inefficient switching of tabs and requires additional prompting," it added.
Replit is optimistic that the collaboration with Google Cloud infrastructure will address some of these challenges.
"Our partnership with Google Cloud on infrastructure and AI is a clear step toward our mission of bringing the next billion software creators online," said Amjad Masad, Replit's CEO and head of engineering.
June Yang, VP cloud AI and industry solutions at Google Cloud, said: "Generative AI can bring significant new capabilities to businesses and developers, including the ability to easily, safely, and scalably create new software applications and online experiences with little or no coding experience."
"Google Cloud infrastructure and foundation models in Vertex AI will power Replit's widely-adopted platform, delivering more performance and scalability to millions of developers around the world."
