GitHub Copilot previews agent mode as market for agentic AI coding tools accelerates - Related to how, agent, copilot, amazon's, agentic

Amazon's gen AI-powered Alexa is coming - how much it could cost you

Amazon might soon reveal the next generation of Alexa, one equipped with AI skills. At a press event scheduled for Wednesday, Feb. 26, the organization reportedly will introduce the long-delayed and much-anticipated Alexa generative AI voice service, Reuters presented on Wednesday.

Citing intel from three people familiar with the matter and an internal planning document, Reuters reported that Amazon executives have a "Go/No-go" meeting slated for Feb. 14. That meeting will determine the "street readiness" of Alexa's generative AI enhancement to ensure the revamp is ready for clients.

On Wednesday, Amazon sent out press invitations for the Feb. 26 event to be held in New York and hosted by former Microsoft executive Panos Panay, who now heads Amazon's devices and services team. A spokesperson confirmed to Reuters that the event will focus on Alexa but declined to provide any details.

Also: The US Copyright Office's new ruling on AI art is here - and it could change everything.

Alexa's generative AI voice service will be able to respond to multiple prompts one after the other in a single conversation. The AI version will also act as an agent to carry out tasks on its own and remember preferences when recommending music, restaurants, and other items. As an example given by Reuters' information, you could order a hamburger for delivery but then modify the order before your food is actually sent out.

It might not be free like 'classic' Alexa.

The new Alexa will be compatible with existing devices, . Amazon will first offer the new voice service to a limited number of early consumers for free. Beyond that initial rollout, the organization reportedly has been considering charging $5 to $10 a month for the AI-powered Alexa. The free version, to be called Classic Alexa, would still be available at no cost.

Alexa currently can handle a wide variety of requests. I use Alexa for several tasks, including playing music, providing weather forecasts, setting a timer or reminder, playing games, controlling smart home devices, and even ordering products. But it still seems limited compared with the AI services offered by OpenAI, Microsoft, and Google. For example, Alexa currently can handle only one request at a time and lacks the conversational skills of a true AI chatbot.

Also: The best Alexa smart speaker I've tested isn't an Echo (and it's 20% off).

An AI Alexa has been in the works for a while. Amazon first revealed such plans in late 2023 with an expected launch in 2024. But the project has suffered delays, which Reuters' findings blamed on concerns over the quality and speed of the responses. With the official unveiling seemingly set, we'll have to see if an Alexa with AI powers will be worth the wait.

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GitHub Copilot previews agent mode as market for agentic AI coding tools accelerates

Agentic AI is all the rage today across multiple sectors, including application development and coding.

Today at long last, GitHub has joined the agentic AI party with the launch of GitHub Copilot agent mode. The promise of agentic AI in development is about enabling developers to build more code with just a simple prompt. The new agent mode will enable Copilot to iterate on its own code and fix errors automatically. Looking forward, GitHub is also previewing a fully autonomous software engineering agent, Project Padawan, that can independently handle entire development tasks.

The new agentic AI functions mark the latest step in the multi-year evolution of the AI-powered coding development space that GitHub helped to pioneer. The Microsoft-owned GitHub first previewed GitHub Copilot in 2021, with general availability coming in 2022. In the AI world, that’s a long time ago, before ChatGPT became a household name and most people had ever heard the term “generative AI.”.

GitHub has been steadily iterating on Copilot. Initially, the service relied on the OpenAI Codex large language model (LLM). In October 2024, individuals gained the ability to choose from a variety of LLMs, including Anthropic’s Claude, Google’s Gemini [website] and OpenAI’s GPT4o. Alongside the agent mode launch, GitHub is now also adding support for Gemini [website] Flash and OpenAI’s o3-mini. Microsoft overall has been emphasizing agentic AI, assembling one of the largest AI agent ecosystems in the market.

The new GitHub Copilot agent mode service comes as a series of rivals, mostly led by startups, have shaken up the development landscape. Cursor, Replit, Bolt and Lovable are all chasing the growing market for AI-powered development that GitHub helped to create.

When GitHub Copilot first emerged, it was positioned as a pair programming tool, which pairs with a developer. Now, GitHub is leaning into the term peer programming as it embraces agentic AI.

“Developer teams will soon be joined by teams of intelligent, increasingly advanced AI agents that act as peer-programmers for everyday tasks,” expressed GitHub CEO Thomas Dohmke. “With today’s launch of GitHub Copilot agent mode, developers can generate, refactor and deploy code across the files of any organization’s codebase with a single prompt command.”.

Technical breakdown: How GitHub’s new agent architecture works.

Since its initial debut, GitHub Copilot has provided a series of core capabilities. Among them is intelligent code completion, which is the ability to suggest code snippets to execute a given function. Copilot also functions as an assistant, allowing developers to input natural language queries to generate code, or get answers about a specific code base. The system, while intelligent, still requires a non-trivial amount of human interaction.

Agent mode goes beyond that. , the platform enables Copilot to iterate on its own output, as well as the results of that output. This can significantly improve results and code output.

Here’s a detailed breakdown of agent mode operation.

When given a prompt, agent mode doesn’t just generate code — it analyzes complete task requirements;

, the system can “infer additional tasks that were not specified, but are also necessary for the primary request to work”.

The agent iterates on both its own output and the result of that output;

It continues iteration until all subtasks are completed.

Automatically recognizes errors in its output;

Can fix identified issues without developer intervention;

Analyzes runtime errors and implements corrections;

indicates and executes necessary terminal commands.

Project Padawan brings the ‘force’ to development.

While agent mode certainly is more powerful than the basic GitHub Copilot operation, it’s still not quite a fully automated experience.

To get to that full experience, GitHub is previewing Project Padawan. In popular culture, a ‘Padawan’ is a reference to a Jedi apprentice from the Star Wars science fiction franchise.

Project Padawan builds on the agent mode and extends it with more automation. In a blog post, Dohmke noted that Padawan will allow customers to assign an issue to GitHub Copilot, and the agentic AI system will handle the entire task. That task can include code development, setting up a repository and assigning humans to review the final code.

“In a sense, it will be like onboarding Copilot as a contributor to every repository on GitHub,” Dohmke stated.

Comparing GitHub’s agent to other agentic AI coding options.

GitHub in some respects is a late entrant to the agentic AI coding race.

Cursor AI and Bolt AI debuted their first AI agents in 2023, while Replit released its agent in 2024. Those tools have had over a year to iterate, gain a following and develop brand loyalty.

I personally have been experimenting with Replit agents for the last several months. Just this week, the corporation brought the technology to its mobile app — which you wouldn’t think is a big deal, but it is. The ability to use a simple prompt, without the need for a full desktop setup to build software, is powerful. Replit’s agent also provides AI prompt tuning to help generate the best possible code. The Replit system runs entirely in the cloud and consumers like me don’t need to download anything.

Bolt doesn’t have a mobile app, but it does have a really nice web interface that makes it easy for beginners to get started. Cursor is a bit more bulky in that it involves a download, but it is a powerful tool for professional developers.

So how does GitHub Copilot agent mode compare? GitHub is the de facto standard for code repositories on the internet today. More than 150 million developers, including more than 90% of the Fortune 100 companies, use GitHub. , more than 77,000 organizations have adopted GitHub Copilot. That makes the technology very sticky. Those organizations already relying heavily on GitHub and Copilot are not going to move away from the technology easily.

In comparison to Replit and Bolt, GitHub Copilot agent mode is not a web-based feature, at least not today. Its preview is currently only available with GitHub Copilot in VS code. That creates a small barrier to entry for absolute newbies for sure, but the reality is also that VS code is arguably the most popular and widely used integrated development environment (IDE).

Developers are a picky bunch. That’s why there are so many different programming languages and frameworks (there seems to be a new JavaScript framework emerging every other month). The bottom line is about comfort and workflow. For existing GitHub Copilot and VS code consumers, the new agent mode brings a much needed feature that will help improve productivity. For those that aren’t stuck in the GitHub Copilot world, agent mode could very well help bring Github Copilot back into the conversation about which agentic AI-driven coding tool to use.

GitHub Copilot agent mode is currently available in preview and requires VS code insiders, which is intended for early adopters. GitHub has not yet provided any pricing details or a date for general availability.

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India is a Very Important Market for AI, says OpenAI’s Sam Altman in Delhi

As part of his global tour, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is in Delhi today for the firm’s DevDay, joined by India’s IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw and OpenAI’s policy lead Pragya Misra.

Altman underlined India’s significance in the global AI ecosystem, also calling it their second biggest market.

He clarified that his comment about India’s foundational models two years ago is being taken out of context. “That was a very specific time with scaling laws. But we are now in a world where we have made incredible progress with distillation,” he expressed, referring to the power of small models and reasoning models. He also expressed models are still not cheap, but they are doable, and India can be a leader.

Back then, Altman had expressed it was totally “hopeless for India to compete with OpenAI in building foundation models”.

Altman still maintained that AI training costs will continue to rise exponentially, but the returns in intelligence and revenue will also grow significantly.

These comments come in light of DeepSeek’s rise.

, near-term AI models are already reaching the threshold of being good enough to address critical issues like healthcare and education—sectors where India has much to gain from AI innovation. However, he emphasised that the technology is not yet advanced enough to cure cancer or similar diseases.

Adding to this, Vaishnaw spoke about how India’s young entrepreneurs are focused on pushing innovation to the next level while keeping costs down. He compared it to the Chandrayaan mission, asking why the same ambition and efficiency couldn’t be brought to developing large language models (LLMs).

Altman also spoke about OpenAI’s recent release, deep research, a new capability in ChatGPT that independently conducts multi-step research on the internet. “Deep research can do a single digit percentage of all economic, time consuming tasks. It can make you twice as efficient,” he expressed.

During this trip, Altman is also set to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi, along with other policymakers and developers.

His visit comes at a time when India is ramping up its AI ambitions. Just yesterday, Ola chief Bhavish Aggarwal introduced Krutrim AI Lab and the launch of several open source AI models tailored to India’s unique linguistic and cultural landscape.

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