Google launches Studio Bot: An AI coding bot for Android developers

Google has launched a new AI-powered coding bot, called Studio Bot, to assist Android developers in building apps by generating code, fixing errors, and answering questions about Android. The announcement was made during Google's I/O event on Wednesday.

The company has stated that its bot is constructed on Codey, the company's recently updated PaLM 2 large language model (LLM) that serves as a fundamental coding model. The bot is capable of supporting the Kotlin and Java programming languages and can be accessed directly from the toolbar on Android Studio. This enables developers to obtain prompt responses to their inquiries or even utilize the bot to debug a section of their code.

Although Google asserts that developers are not required to share their source code with the company in order to utilize Studio Bot, they will be providing data on their interactions with the tool. Google says the bot is still in "very early days," but the company will continue to train it to improve its answers. At present, it is only available to developers in the US via the Canary channel, and there’s no word on when it will see a global launch.

Google's new AI-powered coding tool is part of its continued push into AI. They have been steadily introducing new functionalities to its Bard chatbot since offering it in early access in March. These enhancements include the capacity to create, debug, and explicate lines of code. By packaging these features in a standalone coding assistant, Google has put itself in direct competition with Microsoft and Amazon, both of which have AI-powered coding tools of their own that developers can integrate into various integrated development environments (IDE).

Earlier this year, GitHub Copilot received a ChatGPT-like assistant from Microsoft, and last month Amazon offered CodeWhisperer to developers at no cost. While Studio Bot is solely beneficial to Android developers, Google's new Duet AI coding tool could potentially address this limitation. However, it is important to note that currently, Duet AI is only accessible to Google Cloud users.

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