GitHub's Copilot Chat, which lets developers ask questions about code, is now available to everyone – Microsoft

the Co-pilot chatwhich was previously only available to enterprise customers and some paid individual subscribers, is now included for free in GitHub's Copilot subscription packages and for faculty, students, and verified open source project maintainers.

Based on OpenAI's GPT-4 model, Copilot Chat allows developers to chat with AI in natural language to get programming help and guidance. For example, users can ask it to explain programming concepts, find vulnerabilities, or write unit tests.

GitHub continues to face criticism over potential licensing and copyright violations through its use of public training data. When asked if those with a code base could opt out of the training, GitHub suggested making their repositories private instead. However, there are several reasons to keep copyrighted code public, such as tracking bugs in the community.

There are also concerns about AI illusions, where models confidently produce false information. While GitHub reports that GPT-4 performs better in this area and Copilot Chat has exploit detection features, careful human review of any AI-generated code remains critical.

Microsoft-owned GitHub stresses the importance of Copilot's evolution to keep users busy, given high operating costs and competition from Amazon's CodeWhisperer, Magic, Tabnine, and open source models. Amazon continues to aggressively upgrade CodeWhisperer with new features and subscription packages targeted to developer needs.

In October, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella told analysts that Copilot had 1 million paid users and about 37,000 enterprise customers. But it's up to GitHub to make Copilot more attractive so it doesn't lose ground to competitors, and lose revenue.

According to a Wall Street Journal report, Copilot loses an average of $20 per month per user, and some customers cost GitHub up to $80 per month. The main reason is the high price of running basic AI models, a problem that programming startup GenAI Kite also faced, forcing it to shut down in early December.