GitHub, a popular platform for software development, has announced its plans to revamp itself with the growing Copilot AI coding technology. This includes the release of GitHub Copilot Chat and previews of the GitHub Copilot Enterprise, as well as new AI-powered security capabilities.

The GitHub Copilot Chat, which has been in beta, is set to become generally available in December as part of existing GitHub Copilot subscription programs. It offers a chat interface for developers to communicate with the GitHub Copilot, using any programming language of their choice. This feature is supported by popular integrated development environments (IDEs) such as JetBrains, Microsoft’s Visual Studio Code and Visual Studio, and the Neovim editor. The support for JetBrains is currently available in preview.

The GitHub Copilot Chat boasts being powered by OpenAI’s GPT-4 large multimodal model, which promises more accurate code suggestions, explanations, and guidance. Additionally, an inline feature in the chat allows developers to discuss specific lines of code. To streamline tasks like creating unit tests, GitHub is introducing slash commands.

GitHub is also integrating the GitHub Copilot Chat directly into its platform at github.com, enabling developers to browse through code, pull requests, documentation, and seek coding assistance. The chat feature will also be added to GitHub’s mobile app for users with a GitHub Copilot subscription. This means developers can get programming help by typing on their iPhones or Android devices or by simply using speech-to-text capabilities.

The GitHub Copilot Enterprise aims to provide organizations with a personalized experience by offering the full context of a code base. Connected to repositories on github.com, Copilot Enterprise enables teams to search and build documentation, receive suggestions based on private code, and review pull requests. This feature, along with the GitHub Copilot for Business program, is expected to be available in February 2024 for a price of $39 per user per month.

Although GitHub Copilot has been trained on natural language text and open-source code, it has faced criticism for potentially violating open-source licensing laws. In response, GitHub has stated that they are confident in the legality of GitHub Copilot and its compliance with applicable laws.