Amazon Codewhisperer Vs Github Copilot What Developers Need to Note

Amazon Codewhisperer Vs Github Copilot, what developers need to note about both AI-assisted software tools.

On the surface, GitHub Copilot and Amazon CodeWhisperer appear to be very similar. In this article, we have explained and differentiated between Amazon Codewhisperer Vs Github Copilot, and what developers need to note about both AI-assisted software tools.

The Amazon Codewhisperer and Github Copilot are both AI-powered tools that aid in the acceleration of software development processes. They are also owned by and integrated into the ecosystems of major tech companies — Microsoft in the case of Copilot and Amazon in the case of CodeWhisperer — which distinguishes them from AI-assisted development tools owned by startups rather than tech behemoths, such as Tabnine.

When you get into the details, however, you'll notice that Copilot and CodeWhisperer operate slightly differently, as this article explains. The most important distinction between them is that they focus on different sets of use cases.

What Is GitHub Copilot?

GitHub's Copilot is an AI-assisted software development tool (which is owned by Microsoft). GitHub introduced it in 2021 and made it generally available in 2022.

Copilot analyses the code that developers have written — including comments that describe how code should work even if the code itself hasn't yet been written — and then provides automated suggestions for writing new code. Copilot is powered by OpenAI Codex, an AI model trained on code from millions of publicly available source code repositories.

What Is Amazon CodeWhisperer?

Amazon's CodeWhisperer is an AI-assisted software development tool. CodeWhisperer, like Copilot, interprets developer comments and then suggests code they might want to implement.

Amazon hasn't revealed many details about how CodeWhisperer works in the background. But it does say that the AI models that power the tool were trained using both open-source and Amazon-developed code.

Github Copilot Vs. Amazon Codewhisperer: The Major Key Similarities

Copilot and CodeWhisperer are very similar in terms of functionality. They both address the same needs and can be used in the same ways by developers. You just describe what you want your code to do with either tool, then let AI models auto-suggest the code you need to do it.

Both Copilot and CodeWhisperer are cloud-based solutions provided by major technology vendors.

A third similarity is that, for the time being, neither tool claims to be capable of writing entire software programmes on its own. Both Copilot and CodeWhisperer are limited to assisting developers in completing relatively small segments of code based on the context they provide.

Key Differences Between Copilot and CodeWhisperer

However, when you dig deeper into each tool's specific use cases, you'll notice some significant differences between GitHub Copilot and Amazon CodeWhisperer.

The primary distinction is that Copilot is intended to be a general-purpose AI-assisted development tool, whereas CodeWhisperer is focused on development use cases associated with Amazon platforms, such as Amazon Web Services.

To be clear, this does not preclude you from using CodeWhisperer to assist in the development of applications that are not in any way related to the Amazon ecosystem. You most certainly can. It also does not imply that CodeWhisperer code will only run on Amazon platforms. It can typically run anywhere.

Nonetheless, when it comes to writing code for Amazon technologies, CodeWhisperer outperforms Copilot. If you want to write code for things like moving files between Amazon S3 buckets or working with EC2 instances, CodeWhisperer will probably help you get better results.

In contrast, while Copilot is hosted on a Microsoft-owned platform, it does not cater to Microsoft technologies or programming use cases in any way. It's a multi-purpose tool.

In general, Copilot is the clear winner because it supports a much broader range of use cases. At the moment, the main reason to choose CodeWhisperer over Copilot is if you are writing code that interacts with Amazon APIs, and/or if you only need your AI-assisted development tool to support the limited set of programming languages and IDEs that CodeWhisperer is compatible with.

This could change if Amazon expands CodeWhisperer into a more general-purpose AI-assisted development platform in the future.