GitHub's annual Octoverse report reveals that AI coding assistants — led by GitHub Copilot, Cursor, and Amazon CodeWhisperer — now generate 41% of new code at Fortune 500 companies, up from 27% in 2025.
Developer productivity has increased by an average of 32%, measured by pull requests per developer per week. However, the report also notes a 12% increase in code review time, as human reviewers scrutinise AI-generated code more carefully.
The quality of AI-generated code continues to improve. Bug rates in AI-generated code have fallen to 1.4x the rate of human-written code, down from 2.1x in 2024. For boilerplate and standard patterns, AI code is now statistically equivalent to human code.
The impact on junior developer hiring is becoming visible. 38% of companies report reducing junior developer hiring, while increasing hiring for senior developers and code reviewers.