Chatbots and AI-powered copilots are all the rage these days with pretty much all big tech companies investing heavily in this area. Amazon recently placed a lot of emphasis on Alexa's AI capabilities integrated into its latest smart home products, Microsoft is marketing its Copilot initiative across its entire Microsoft 365 suite and Windows, and Google is aiming to continue its dominance in the online search space through improvements to Bard. Now, Microsoft-owned GitHub has announced that it is making it even easier to code through its GitHub Copilot program.

In a blog post, GitHub has revealed that its Copilot Chat utility is now available as a public beta for all individuals signed up for GitHub Copilot. The company aims to ensure that developers are productive when writing code through pair programming experiences powered by Copilot and Copilot Chat, with the latter offering a natural language conversational interface with the AI.

GitHub has emphasized that the biggest problem that Copilot Chat solves is that you no longer need to switch contexts - such as performing a web search in a browser tab - when trying to solve or troubleshoot a coding dilemma. Instead, you can just open Copilot Chat in your integrated development environment (IDE) and ask it relevant questions directly. In addition, the chatbot will also provide guidance when it comes to suggesting best coding practices, performing code analysis, recommending security fixes, and explaining steps in the debugging and troubleshooting process.

GitHub Copilot Chat is now available free of cost for all individual GitHub Copilot users. It is important to note that an individual subscription for GitHub Copilot costs $10/month or $100/year, but you now get Copilot Chat bundled for free too, as long as you use Visual Studio or Visual Studio Code as your IDE. The chatbot has been undergoing testing with business customers since July, but it's currently unknown if it will be priced separately as an add-on once it eventually becomes generally available.