Amazon CodeWhisperer, a Real-Time AI Coding Companion, Available for Free to Individuals
Amazon Web Services (AWS) has announced the general availability of Amazon CodeWhisperer, a real-time AI coding companion, along with the introduction of a free CodeWhisperer Individual tier for all developers. Originally launched in preview last year, CodeWhisperer aims to keep developers focused and productive by assisting them in writing code quickly and securely, without the need to disrupt their flow by leaving their integrated development environment (IDE) to conduct research. When faced with the task of writing code for complex and ever-changing environments, developers can enhance their productivity and streamline their work by utilizing CodeWhisperer within their preferred IDEs, including Visual Studio Code, IntelliJ IDEA, and others. CodeWhisperer assists with code creation for routine or time-consuming tasks, working with unfamiliar APIs or SDKs, correctly and effectively using AWS APIs, and other common coding scenarios such as reading and writing files, image processing, writing unit tests, and more.
One of the standout features of CodeWhisperer is its ability to provide real-time coding suggestions directly within the developer’s IDE, allowing them to maintain focus and avoid interruptions when searching for information on the internet or consulting colleagues. During the testing phase, participants who used CodeWhisperer were 27% more likely to successfully complete tasks and did so an average of 57% faster than those who did not use CodeWhisperer.
Additionally, CodeWhisperer is the only AI coding companion capable of conducting security scans to find and suggest remediations for hard-to-detect vulnerabilities in both generated and developer-written code. If a vulnerability is detected, CodeWhisperer provides suggestions to help address the issue.
The code suggestions provided by CodeWhisperer are not exclusive to working with AWS. However, CodeWhisperer is optimized for the most widely-used AWS APIs, such as AWS Lambda and Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), making it the ideal coding companion for developers building applications on AWS.
Amazon CodeWhisperer is now available to all developers, not just those with an AWS account or working with AWS, for writing code in languages such as Python, Java, JavaScript, TypeScript, C#, Go, Rust, PHP, Ruby, Kotlin, C, C++, Shell scripting, SQL, and Scala. Developers can sign up with just an email address, and as mentioned at the beginning of the announcement, CodeWhisperer offers an Individual tier that is freely available to all developers. Further details on the Individual tier and pricing for the Professional tier can be found at https://aws.amazon.com/codewhisperer/pricing.
Amazon CodeWhisperer’s entry into the AI coding assistant market puts it in direct competition with Microsoft GitHub Copilot, another AI-powered coding companion that helps developers write code more efficiently. GitHub Copilot, launched by Microsoft in 2021, has gained popularity among developers for its ability to provide suggestions and autocomplete code based on patterns learned from publicly available code repositories.
