GitHub Launches AI Sandbox Platform for Developers to Test Leading Models

GitHub has launched a new sandbox platform where developers can try out leading AI models with their own code.

Named GitHub Models, the new platform is designed to streamline AI development, providing tools and resources to help developers more easily build new AI applications.

The platform provides access to models including brand-new systems like Meta’s Llama 3.1, GPT-4o and GPT-4o Mini from OpenAI and Mistral’s Large 2.

“With GitHub Models, more than 100 million developers can access and experiment with new AI models where they already manage their source code, issues, pull requests, workflows and repositories — directly on GitHub,” Thomas Dohmke, GitHub’s CEO wrote in a blog post.

Developers already enjoy a glut of AI-powered coding and developing tools. 

GitHub’s own Copilot increased its user numbers during its first year, though the company was losing an average of $20 a month per user in 2023.

To further entice developers, GitHub’s new platform-based offering essentially provides them with a place to try before you deploy.

With GitHub Models, AI developers have access to an interactive playground where they can privately test models and then deploy them where they manage their own source code.

Users can even try out models with features like Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) to power things like improved search of internal data.

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GitHub Models can then be used in tandem with other GitHub services like the cloud-based development environment and the Actions for automating deployment pipelines.

GitHub has promised it will not share any user prompts or outputs from the new platform with model providers, nor use them to train or improve its own models. This means businesses can test new models for potential applications using their own data.

The GitHub Model platform is currently available in a limited public beta.

GitHub plans to expand the platform when it’s made generally available, including adding more models and modalities, including vision capabilities.

“As an AI startup founder and open source maintainer, GitHub Models enables my team to access and experiment with various large language models in one place,” said Anand Chowdhary, co-founder of AI sales platform FirstQuadrant. “This streamlines our development and lowers the entry barrier for building AI apps.”