- The GitHub Next team announced an AI-powered project at the company’s recent event. The voice assistant allows software developers to code just by using their voice and is called Hey, GitHub.
- According to GitHub, the new voice assistant can understand natural language requests for Copilot to suggest a code snippet or summarize what a specific section of code does.
- GitHub Next team’s researchers and engineers are allowing access to the new voice feature via a waitlist that is open for interested developers who wants to code without using a keyboard.
Microsoft-owned GitHub is working on a new experimental feature with Copilot users. The project is called “Hey, GitHub” which is a new voice-based interaction system for its Copilot software. It will allow programmers to code with their voice and no keyboard, just like how you would speak to Siri, Alexa, or Google Assistant.
Hey, GitHub features
Hey, GitHub will be available in Copilot which is the AI tool that GitHub launched earlier this year to aid developers in writing code and costs $10 per month. The new voice system is being developed by GitHub Next which is a team of researchers and engineers investigating the future of software development. They announced the experiment at the firm’s recent GitHub Universe 2022 event. In their blog post they wrote;
« With the power of your voice, we’re excited about the potential to bring the benefits of GitHub Copilot to even more developers, including developers who have difficulty typing using their hands. »
The features of Hey, GitHub include writing and editing code just using the voice assistant that can understand natural language requests for Copilot to suggest a code snippet. The code navigation feature will help developers to navigate a codebase by saying something like “Hey GitHub, go to line 34,”. Control the IDE feature can control Visual Studio Code, with commands like “run the program” or “toggle zen mode.” Code summarization will provide a summary of the lines as well as a summary of what the code does.
Currently “Hey, GitHub” only works when coding on Visual Studio Code. but it’s apparently working to expand its capabilities in the future. It is not clear that it will eventually launch as a full product. Anyone who wants to participate in the project can sign up on the waitlist.
Additionally, GitHub is also planning to let businesses purchase and manage seat licenses for GitHub Copilot. This will contain admin controls for Copilot that can manage the various settings across an organization. GitHub is opening up a waitlist for businesses to sign up here.