Amazon’s Code Autocorrect Highlights Big Tech’s Interest in Code Generators

Amazon wants to give its coders a nudge in the right direction. 

The company is seeking to patent “session-specific code recommendations” for editing code files. Amazon’s tech is essentially autocorrect for code, providing real-time suggestions and insights. 

When a developer starts editing a code file, Amazon’s tech records the changes, using a machine learning model to analyze the patterns in the modifications. The system then suggests alternative edits or improvements to the changes the user made, which the user can then accept or reject. 

“Code development tools offer developers, designers, and other users with different capabilities to improve code performance and identify errors, which may … help to overcome a developer’s lack of familiarity with a programming language,” Amazon said in the filing.

Amazon’s patent is a sign of the times: Code generation is quickly becoming one of the most common (and lucrative) use cases for the massive generative AI models that tech firms have spent the past several years developing. 

• This isn’t the first time we’ve seen Amazon take an interest in coding assistants. The company introduced Amazon Q Developer in April last year after debuting the tech at Re:Invent in 2023. Microsoft, IBM and Google have launched similar tools. 
• Meanwhile, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei claimed earlier this month that AI will write 90% of code in the coming months, and AI coding startup Anysphere is in talks to raise hundreds of millions in funding at a nearly $10 billion valuation. 

While tech firms are likely eyeing this as a means of achieving some ROI, AI code generators still face the same problems as any AI-powered product: hallucination, data security and accuracy issues. Amazon’s patent highlights that code assistance tech may be better put to use as a copilot to a developer, rather than as the developer itself.