Google Cloud announces AI partnership with Replit as it chases Microsoft’s Copilot
Google has partnered with Replit to add generative AI into the online based software development platform. The move seems to be a direct attempt to compete with Microsoft’s Copilot which was first introduced to GitHub in 2021 as an AI pair programming assistant.
The program quickly became popular among developers for its ability to augment and hasten application and web development processes and Google hopes to replicate this with Replit which already has over 20 million users. Users will be able to deploy and scale their applications on Google Cloud, while using Replit's own AI pair programmer, Ghostwriter.
“Our partnership with Google Cloud on infrastructure and AI is a clear step toward our mission of bringing the next billion software creators online. AI has changed software development forever. The seamless idea-to-deployed software experience that Replit provides developers will continue to set a new bar for software creation,” said Amjad Masad, the CEO and head of engineering at Replit.
Ghostwriter currently writes about 30% of the code for developers and by leveraging Google infrastructure the companies are hoping they can advance the AI further.
Having been launched in 2022, Ghostwriter has a lot of catching up to do to reach Copilot but it will benefit from Replit’s large user base which can act as its advocate.
The direct competition between the two products will also act as a necessary catalyst to bring more advancements in the field of AI programming and further simplify the process for developers.
“The Google and Replit partnership is in direct competition with Copilot and expect this to be just the start of this embedded new capability in the drive to deliver application code faster, with improved quality that raises the productivity of the development process and developers,” said Rotibi, chief of enterprise research at CCS Insight.
We are already seeing Copilot up its game with its adoption of OpenAI’s GPT-4 model to add chat and voice for Copilot across the whole application lifecycle process.
