IBM has launched Bob, its AI coding assistant (officially called an 'AI development partner'), into general availability after an internal pilot with 80,000 employees that reportedly yielded 45% productivity gains. Bob uses a mix of frontier LLMs, open-source models, and IBM's Granite SLMs to cover the full software development lifecycle. A premium Z package targets mainframe modernization, helping teams tackle technical debt and legacy COBOL systems. Pricing runs from $20/month (Pro, 40 Bobcoins) to $200/month (Ultra, 500 Bobcoins), with the Z package currently in free technical preview. Analysts note Bob's multi-model approach as a differentiator, though it raises transparency concerns. Security vulnerabilities discovered in January — including CLI malware execution and data exfiltration risks — cast some shadow on the GA launch.
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