Artificial Intelligence not only allows us to generate text based on a description. It also allows us to generate images and even videos (although the latter still has a long way to go). In addition, and as if that were not enough, it is also a fantastic tool for generating code, since it is capable of interpreting natural language to pass it on to code in different programming languages.
Both Bard, like Bing Chat and like ChatGPT, allow us to generate code in different programming languages. However, we are not always going to get the best results, especially when it comes to complex tasks. The solution available to programmers is Copilot, an Artificial Intelligence available on GitHub.
GitHub Copilot from Microsoft, analyzes the code we have written to verify its operation and offers us real-time suggestions to optimize its operation. In addition, it also allows us to generate code to perform certain functions. This AI has been entered through the public GitHub repositories, so it is capable of helping us with programming tasks in practically any language.
Using GitHub Copilot for free
Unlike the aforementioned AIs, Copilot is not a tool that we can use for free. The people plan, which any programmer can hire to lighten the workload with this assistant, is priced at $10 per month or $100 per year if we hire a full year of subscription.
The business plan costs twice as much, $19 per month and, unlike the individual plan, the possibility of contracting a full year of subscription and saving one or two monthly payments is not available. However, there are methods to access Copilot without having to pay monthly or annually, as long as we meet some of the requirements that we show you below.
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Being a student or teacher. Like many other platforms, GitHub allows us to access the Copilot assistant completely free of charge as long as we are verified students and/or teachers of one of the centers that are affiliated with the program. Access through this plan is not limited in any way and we can use the platform for whatever we need, an option that we do not have in the free plan. To register and check if our academic center is considered among those included in GitHub Copilot, we must do it through this website.
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Maintaining the code of a popular application. Another way to be able to use Copilot without having to checkout is to be a contributor to a very popular open source project stored on GitHub.
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Using the trial period. GitHub allows us to try Copilot completely free of charge during a 30-day trial period, to see if it is really what we are looking for and to confirm that we want to continue paying for the subscription.
Outside of those three options, there is no other way to use this AI without paying. Although it is true that there are many alternatives, such as ChatGPT, which with GPT-4 has greatly improved the code generated when programming, or Chat Bing, which also uses algorithms similar to those of Copilot and can help us program very simple and precise way.
