At Google’s annual I/O developer conference, Android Studio is receiving an infusion of AI.
Android Studio Hedgehog, the latest version currently in the Canary release channel, will be the first to support the new conversational experience within Android Studio.
This feature is designed to assist developers in writing code, fixing bugs, and answering general coding questions.
The Studio Bot, developed on top of Google’s new PaLM 2-based foundation model that is specifically trained for coding, named Codey, will be available first to developers in the U.S. before eventually rolling out to a wider audience.
Google has emphasized its commitment to privacy in the creation of its new Studio Bot. While the chat between the developer and the bot is shared, none of the source code is.
However, the company admits that the bot is still in its early stages of development and is being trained to improve its ability to answer developers’ questions. This is aided by the fact that the range of questions asked within Android Studio is somewhat limited, allowing Google to create a system that can efficiently respond to queries regarding specific programming languages.
It’s worth noting that Google is also introducing a new code completion and generation service called Codey, which can be integrated into various IDEs, including Google’s Cloud shell, and competes with similar services such as GitHub’s Copilot and Amazon’s CodeWhisperer.
Although the decision to give this Android Studio version its own branding may seem unusual, it is in keeping with Google’s established approach to branding.
