When Does ‘Fake It Till You Make It’ Just Become ‘Faking It’?; The History of ‘Plagiarism’ in AI

Fame can be a double-edged sword—a lesson some artificial intelligence startups are learning the hard way.

Take Devin, the AI-powered coding assistant developed by Cognition AI that went viral when it launched last month with an impressive demo showing how it could complete coding jobs on the freelance site Upwork. Techies across X and Reddit declared that software engineering as a career was dead.

Over the weekend, though, a YouTube video titled, “Debunking Devin: ‘First AI Software Engineer’ Upwork lie exposed!” began picking up steam. In the video, a developer describes some inconsistencies in Devin’s demo, including the fact that Devin doesn’t actually do what the Upwork posting is asking for; that the bugs it’s fixing were likely created by the coding assistant itself; and that it seems to take six-plus hours to complete a task that should have taken half an hour.