An artificial general intelligence tool is AI-powered Stack Overflow, a question-and-answer website for developers. Over 100 million people visit the site monthly, where developers submit their specific questions, errors, or related queries, and other developers provide answers through replies. They blocked the ChatGPT tool’s responses because people submitted too much AI-generated content.
According to reports, Stack Overflow has lost almost 50% of its traffic in the past year, and the company aims to help developers and itself with a new AI-powered Slack Overflow. The company has officially announced its own Artificial General Intelligence Overflow AI, a dedicated AI-powered chatbot that will only respond to questions and answers currently. Since it takes a lot of time to come to the right repository and check the solution, Stack Overflow has released a dedicated AI-powered chatbot to solve this problem. Overflow AI is trained and fine-tuned with around 58 million questions and answers to understand and solve developers’ problems.
Stack Overflow AI
The company is trying to provide authentic solutions to problems using chatbots. Previously, a lexical search was used on the platform, where search results were shown based on keyboard-based question-answer searches. But now, the company has developed a new search engine that attempts to answer your questions when you submit them in natural language. The AI model developed for this purpose is called GenAI, and the company has also started integrating it.
It works just like other AI chatbots like ChatGPT, Bard, and Bing AI, where you can ask questions in natural language, and it will generate a conversation. You can expect better results, but it is currently in beta, so a public release will take some time. The company has recently released its Slack integration, so you can add the StackPlusOne chatbot to your Slack. Now you can use the Overflow AI directly in Slack as well.
In addition, you can find Overflow AI in the Extension, which you can add to your IDE, such as Visual Studio Code. The company does not plan to replace the existence of GitHub CoPilot, but it does provide a free alternative for users. The company is focusing on its GenAI Slack Exchange, where you can find many interesting new features. 40% of developers trust that AI can solve their problems, which is a very good tool for productivity.
How to Get Access to Stack Overflow AI
This is in the beta stage, and you need to get Beta access before using it. Here are the following instructions on how to get access to Stack Overflow AI:
- Visit Stack Overflow Labs and click on Sign up.
- Enter your email and select your country to submit a sign-up request.
- That’s it!
The company has currently provided beta access to only a handful of users. It may take some time, so keep an eye on your emails for notifications from Stack Overflow AI.
How to use Stack Overflow AI
It is still in the early beta phase, so some options and menus might change. But the basic instructions are as follows:
- Open Overflow.
- Then search for your query in natural language.
- Then you will get a repository of questions where you can find your answer.
- But if you don’t like that answer, write your prompt or input in the “continue conversation” section and click “Ask”.
- Then it will open a chatbot where you can ask follow-up questions.
You can give Yes or No feedback based on the response so that the company can work on how people get answers and improve the product later.
There are always new ways to improve your Stack Overflow experience, such as summarizing. With Summarised, you can get a summary of any solution along with the answer, which will turn into a chatbox icon, and when you hover over it, it will show the summary. You can change the answer settings later to keep sources and adjust style and length parameters.
You can use an extension in Visual Studio Code to find solutions to your problems and steps. It is a free alternative to GitHub Copilot. As mentioned, you can also use its bot in Stack to solve queries.
