An Insight into the Impact of Generative Artificial Intelligence Tools on Software Development Practices

Integration of Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools into software engineering, especially for automated code generation, has started reshaping development practices and raising questions about the future of the profession itself. This paper presents the results of a research exploring the impact of AI on software engineering/development, focusing on aspects of automated code generation and human-AI collaboration. The use of Generative AI tools, in particular AI chatbots ChatGPT, Gemini and Bing (today Copilot), has been tested on use cases of varying levels of difficulty. The results demonstrate outstanding capabilities of the tested tools in streamlining tasks and providing assistance, but show that these tools remain most effective when integrated into a workflow under the supervision of qualified engineers/developers. The paper also presents the results of a survey conducted among software engineers/developers highly proficient in using AI. The survey indicates that most of the respondents believe that AI has a positive impact on the productivity of software engineers/developers, with more than half of respondents believing that AI will not replace software engineers/developers but is a tool that helps them be more productive. Survey respondents particularly emphasized the importance of ethics, privacy, and data security.