Highlights:

  • The updated chatbot from Android Studio is built on the midrange Gemini Pro model, which aims to strike a compromise between hardware efficiency and response quality.
  • Gemini in Android Studio may produce documentation that explains the operation of recently written code.

Google LLC updates Android Studio recently. The coding assistant of the Android apps developer toolkit receives an upgrade.

An “IDE,” or integrated development environment, is what Android Studio is. It functions as a type of word processor where programmers may write the code for new applications. In addition, Android Studio comes with an emulator that allows one to simulate running Android phones on a Windows computer to test new code.

Google introduced Studio Bot, an AI coding assistant, to the IDE in May last year. Its foundation was a large language model known as PaLM 2, which the search engine giant unveiled that same month. With the recently released upgrade, Studio Bot is replaced in Android Studio by Gemini, an enhanced coding assistant built on a more recent AI model.

Google debuted a new flagship LLM portfolio last year, six months after the release of PaLM 2. Three models with different feature sets and hardware requirements comprise the so-called Gemini series. The updated chatbot from Android Studio is built on the midrange Gemini Pro model, which aims to strike a compromise between hardware efficiency and response quality.

Android Studio Product Manager Sandhya Mohan reported, “If you were already using Studio Bot in the canary channel, you’ll continue experiencing the same helpful and powerful features, but you’ll notice improved quality in responses compared to earlier versions.”

When it comes to general Android questions, like how to integrate an app with the operating system’s location tracking capability, Gemini in Android Studio can provide the answers, and the chatbot can respond to inquiries unique to a project. For example, a developer could ask for help eliminating duplicate records from a dataset that powers an app’s functionality.

In Android Studio, Gemini is also capable of handling more complicated jobs. Google claims the chatbot can create whole app interface portions and rewrite code files in a new programming language. Additionally, Gemini in Android Studio may produce documentation that explains the operation of recently written code.

“Gemini is only available after you log in and enable it. You don’t need to send your code context to take advantage of most features. By default, Gemini in Android Studio’s chat responses are purely based on conversation history, and you control whether you want to share additional context for customized responses,” Mohan detailed.

The chatbot is built upon Google’s LLM, Gemini 1.0 Pro, unveiled in December last year. Since then, the search giant has released information about the Gemini 1.5 Pro, a more recent product version. The latter model has better coding capabilities; thus, it’s feasible that Android Studio will get it in a later release.

According to Google, Gemini 1.5 Pro beat Android Studio’s 1.0 version on 87% of the benchmarks its engineers tested. The company sent Gemini 1.5 Pro a prompt with almost 100,000 lines of code in an internal test. It succeeded in coming up with justifications and making suggestions for enhancements.