OpenAI has released a new tool called Codex to its ChatGPT Pro, Enterprise, and Team subscribers, which enables users to write code through natural language.
The tool generates code from natural language and can operate autonomously on sandboxed code to find bugs and suggest changes to code; it is currently free to use, but OpenAI plans to start charging for access once it sees how popular it is.
OpenAI also plans to gradually increase the length of time Codex works autonomously over time from the current 30 minute sessions.
Currently, Codex is relatively limited but OpenAI’s goal is for it to become a general-purpose AI engineer that engineers can delegate work to.
This release is a timely announcement as Google’s annual conference, Google I/O, is set to take place next week and is likely to include updates on its AI technologies.