Can OpenAI o1 Save GitHub Copilot from Cursor?
Tech X has been on fire since OpenAI dropped o1, or what some people call Strawberry or Q*. The new model from OpenAI is solving complex problems with its improved reasoning capabilities in areas such as science, coding, and maths. However, the real treat for developers was o1-mini, a smaller model designed specifically for advanced coding. Meanwhile, Cursor and Claude continue to dominate the developers’ minds and have been successful in making people shift away from GitHub Copilot for certain use cases. According to sources, Microsoft has plans to upgrade its capabilities on the VS Code IDE, which would help it compete with Cursor, but what about GitHub Copilot? Would o1 be able to save GitHub Copilot? GitHub CEO Thomas Dohmke believes so. He posted on X a video of GitHub Copilot in VS Code running with OpenAI’s o1 model, which he calls “flat out badass”. The new model has already been integrated within GitHub Copilot and is making AI pair programming a lot smarter. GitHub Copilot in VS Code + OpenAI o1 is flat out bad ass. pic.twitter.com/DUaTjw9mr7— Thomas Dohmke (@ashtom) September 12, 2024 The Battle has Just Begun “From Copilot Workspace to Copilot Chat, the future of the developers’ environment is AI-native on GitHub,” said Dohmke while showcasing that OpenAI’s o1 is running with Copilot. But improvements for the VS Code editor are yet to be announced. GitHub Copilot is the world’s most widely adopted AI developer tool. As shared in Microsoft Q4 FY24 earnings, just over two years since its general availability, more than 77,000 organisations have adopted Copilot, up 180% year-over-year. Additionally, GitHub has 1.8 million paid GitHub Copilot subscribers. Meanwhile, developers have already started implementing o1 within Cursor Composer and creating apps. Cursor being a fork of VS Code, enables much more flexibility when integrating LLMs, making it ideal for several developers. Taking it a step further, some developers have also started installing GitHub Copilot on Cursor, importing all the VS Code extensions. The reason is to use GitHub Copilot’s auto completion as Cursor’s credits are over, which seems like it is now a backup option for several developers. Devin’s creator, Cognition Labs, worked closely with OpenAI over the last few weeks to evaluate OpenAI o1’s reasoning capabilities with Devin. They found that the new series of models represents a significant improvement for agentic systems that deal with code. Combining this with Cursor is an upgrade for several developers. Though the categories of both the software are different, the competition now seems to be head-on between Cursor and GitHub Copilot as both can run on o1, which according to developers, is currently performing better than Claude in certain use cases. When it comes to building apps, Cursor + Claude is still a powerhouse. Moreover, Claude Artifacts have been widely adopted by everyone now, and OpenAI’s o1 is capable of that. This makes the battle intense. VS Code can Save GitHub Copilot or Mark the End of It Microsoft is not shy of giving developers what they want. The company has quickly started offering OpenAI’s o1 on Azure, which is what many developers were looking for (open source would have been better). “Not sure if Microsoft can truly comprehend the true footprint of VSCode,” said Jaana Dogan, principal engineer at Google. People have been figuring out ways to make the stale VS Code better by integrating GitHub Copilot, but that was quickly marked redundant when Cursor was launched, and now integrating the o1 API on Cursor makes the case for GitHub Copilot and VS Code even worse. Seems like OpenAI’s bet on offering the API instead of just the chat version of o1 came as a double-edged sword for Microsoft and GitHub, as the AI coding tools can easily integrate the new model to better themselves. Cursor’s coding and AI capabilities should be a wake up call for Microsoft to make VS Code integration with GitHub Copilot a lot easier. But according to internal reports, Harald Kirschner, project manager at VS Code, has been keeping an eye on Cursor and the team is keenly aware of Cursor’s capabilities and there might be several things in the pipeline. “I think we’ll all be pleasantly surprised,” he said. If not for OpenAI’s o1 attempt to save GitHub Copilot, maybe a VS Code update would be able to save it as developers are already happy with what Cursor is doing with OpenAI’s o1. Maybe, the Microsoft 365 Copilot Wave 2 event on September 16 would mark a new beginning for VS Code and GitHub Copilot.
Meanwhile, developers have already started implementing OpenAI’s o1 within Cursor Composer and creating apps.
The new model from OpenAI is solving complex problems with its improved reasoning capabilities in areas such as science, coding, and maths.
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Mohit writes about AI in simple, explainable, and often funny words. He's especially passionate about chatting with those building AI for Bharat, with the occasional detour into AGI.