How JetBrains’ New AI Assistant Is Changing the Way Developers Code

JetBrains recently updated almost all of its IDE products, introducing a new AI Assistant that includes features such as chat, code analysis, and documentation generation.

The AI Assistant is available across the full JetBrains IDE lineup, including IntelliJ IDEA, WebStorm, PyCharm, GoLand, RubyMine, Rider, and others.

Powered by OpenAI, JetBrains’ AI Assistant is similar to Microsoft’s Copilot for Visual Studio Code and Visual Studio.

While GitHub Copilot focuses on source‑code auto‑completion, the AI Assistant is deeply integrated into JetBrains IDEs, offering many functions not available in the Copilot plugin and also relying on internal JetBrains models in addition to OpenAI’s.

The assistant is delivered as a plugin that requires the AI Technology Preview version of the IDE; the preview is currently limited by system capacity and can generate documentation for Java, Kotlin, and Python projects, with functionality varying by programming language.

Community users have tested the preview with Java and C# projects, noting smooth integration and a chat assistant that provides useful suggestions and code examples.

Increased use of the AI Assistant may reduce visits to sites like Stack Overflow, as many questions can be answered directly within the IDE; an example is shown for creating a CSS table header in an ASP.NET Core project.

However, the AI Assistant has notable drawbacks and risks, such as providing incorrect answers, lacking community review, and the possibility that code could be sent to third parties. JetBrains states it does not share client data with LLM providers, but providers could still misuse data, so developers working on confidential projects should be cautious.

Many developers are willing to accept these issues because the assistant can boost productivity; one user said, “We understand what LLM/AI is and its limitations, and as long as it improves efficiency and code quality, it’s valuable.”

The pricing for JetBrains’ AI Assistant has not yet been determined.