GitLab has announced updates to GitLab Duo, which is a set of 14 capabilities with artificial intelligence, including Suggested Reviewer, Vulnerability Summary, and Code Explanation.

According to a recently released survey by the company, developers surveyed said they spend only about 25% of their time writing code. GitLab Duo helps improve product lifecycle time as it can also help with those non-development tasks such as test generation, value stream forecasting, and summarizing planning discussions.

New updates to GitLab Duo include a beta version of Chat and general availability of Code Suggestions.

GitLab Duo Chat serves as an AI assistant designed to aid developers in code analysis, planning, security issue comprehension and resolution, CI/CD pipeline troubleshooting, and support with merge requests, among various other functionalities. This feature is currently accessible as a beta version in GitLab 16.6.

“The introduction of GitLab Duo Chat furthers our momentum and focus to bring AI beyond just code creation. To realize AI’s full potential, it needs to be embedded across the software development lifecycle, allowing DevSecOps teams to benefit from boosts to security, efficiency, and collaboration”, said David DeSanto, chief product officer at GitLab.

Code Suggestions helps with new code creation and code updates. It will be generally available in the GitLab 16.7 release, coming in December.