CodeWhisperer has been in preview since last year and uses various integrated development environments (IDEs), like Visual Studio Code, to generate lines of code based on a text-based prompt.

It filters out any code suggestions that are potentially biased or unfair and flags any code that's similar to open-source training data. It also comes with security scanning features that can identify vulnerabilities within a developer's code, while providing suggestions to help close any security gaps it uncovers. CodeWhisperer now supports several languages, including Python, Java, JavaScript, TypeScript, and C#, including Go, Rust, PHP, Ruby, Kotlin, C, C++, Shell scripting, SQL, and Scala.

Microsoft currently has its own flavour of an AI code righter or assistant out there, but it charges $10 a month,

An Amazon spokesman said that CodeWhisperer was a  "real-time AI coding companion" that helped developers who were facing increasing time pressure to get their work done.

At the moment, developers were forced to break their flow to turn to an internet search, sites such as StackOverflow, or their colleagues for help in completing tasks.

CodeWhisperer provides the starter code they need, it's disruptive as they've had to leave their IDE environment to search or ask questions in a forum or find and ask a colleague — further adding to the disruption. Instead, CodeWhisperer meets developers where they are most productive, providing recommendations in real time as they write code or comments in their IDE.

Amazon claims that participants who used CodeWhisperer were 27 per cent more likely to complete tasks successfully and did so an average of 57 per cent faster than those who didn't use CodeWhisperer.