GitHub has unveiled a new sandbox platform named GitHub Models, designed to simplify the process for developers to experiment with cutting-edge AI models. The platform aims to provide developers with a streamlined environment for building and testing AI applications using their own code.
GitHub Models offers access to a range of leading AI models, including Meta’s latest Llama 3.1, OpenAI’s GPT-4o and GPT-4o Mini, and Mistral’s Large 2. This new offering allows developers to work directly within GitHub’s ecosystem, where they already manage their source code, issues, pull requests, workflows, and repositories.
“GitHub Models allows over 100 million developers to access and experiment with new AI models right where they work,” GitHub CEO Thomas Dohmke stated in a blog post. “This integration brings AI experimentation and deployment into the heart of their development environment.”
The introduction of GitHub Models comes as part of GitHub’s broader efforts to enhance its suite of AI-powered tools. The company’s Copilot service, which assists with coding, saw an increase in users during its first year despite a reported average loss of $20 per user in 2023.
GitHub Models aims to offer a “try before you deploy” experience, providing developers with an interactive playground to privately test AI models before integrating them into their projects. Features such as Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) are available, enabling improved internal data search and other advanced functionalities.
The platform is designed to work seamlessly with other GitHub services, including its cloud-based development environment and Actions for automating deployment pipelines. GitHub has assured users that it will not share prompts or outputs from GitHub Models with model providers or use them to train its own models, ensuring that businesses can test new models with their own data confidentially.
Currently, GitHub Models is available in a limited public beta, with plans for expansion to include additional models and features, such as vision capabilities, in the future.
Anand Chowdhary, co-founder of AI sales platform FirstQuadrant, praised the new platform, noting, “GitHub Models streamlines our development process and lowers the entry barriers for building AI applications, allowing us to experiment with various large language models in one place.”
As GitHub continues to integrate AI capabilities into its development tools, GitHub Models represents a significant step towards making AI development more accessible and efficient for developers worldwide.
