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Google is making one of its AI tools for developers, Studio Bot, available to people in over 170 regions around the world, but those in the United Kingdom and European Union are still barred from access.
First unveiled at Google I/O 2023, Studio Bot is a developer-focused AI chatbot integrated directly into Android Studio. Like any other chatbot, you can ask questions and get (usually) helpful answers, including code samples that may solve your problem. You can also get help with specific errors and particular portions of code, but Google notes that Studio Bot only sees what you explicitly choose to share with it. Using Studio Bot does not allow the company to see your private code.
Under the hood, Studio Bot is built on “Codey,” a cutely named large language model (LLM) that is specifically designed to help with writing code, as opposed to how other LLMs are often intended for communicating ideas in languages like English.
At launch, Studio Bot was only made available to those in the United States, but today, it’s becoming accessible in much of the world. You can find the full list of “over 170 countries and territories” on Google’s dedicated site for the project, but the gist of the expansion is that it’s now available in most countries and regions outside of the European Union and the United Kingdom.
Another of Google’s AI chat projects, Bard, was initially excluded from the EU, presumably due to concerns about the union’s privacy laws. However, the company was ultimately able to bring Bard to those countries. That being the case, it’s interesting to see that Europe is still currently excluded from accessing Studio Bot.
To get started with Studio Bot, you’ll need to install the latest version of Android Studio Canary.
Correction: This article originally stated that Studio Bot was available in Android Studio Hedgehog beta, but it currently requires a Canary version. We apologize for the error.
