Open Sourcing Copilot AI Features
- Microsoft will open source AI features from GitHub Copilot integrated into VS Code.
- This extends the open source ethos that has driven VS Code’s success to its AI-powered capabilities.
Copilot's Free and Paid Features
Key takeaway: Open sourcing Copilot doesn't affect paid functionality; users pay for the backend compute, advanced models, and enterprise services like indemnification. Copilot offers a free tier and a 'bring your own key' option, allowing users to leverage their existing API keys and models.
- Copilot has a free tier with limits on premium model requests but unlimited calls to the base model.
- Users can 'bring your own key' and pay for their API usage.
- Paid Copilot primarily covers compute costs on the backend, separate from the open-source aspect.
- Enterprises may pay for additional services like indemnification.
- The 'bring your own key' infrastructure lets users directly use their models without going through GitHub's backend service.
Behind Copilot's Backend AI
- Copilot’s "secret sauce" lies mainly on the backend: indexing GitHub repos and using custom fine-tuned models for specific tasks.
- Large foundational models are complemented by specialized smaller models for efficiency and scalability.