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GitLab and Google Cloud extend partnership to deliver secure AI
Fri, 5th May 2023

GitLab and Google Cloud have announced an extension of its strategic partnership to deliver secure AI offerings to the enterprise.

GitLab is used by businesses to secure and protect their valuable assets, and leads with a privacy-first approach to AI. By leveraging Google Cloud's customisable foundation models and open generative AI infrastructure, GitLab states the company will provide customers with AI-assisted features directly within the enterprise DevSecOps platform.

GitLab states it is working with Google Cloud because of its strong commitment to privacy and enterprise readiness, and its leadership in AI. With generative AI support in Vertex AI, GitLab can tune Google's foundation models with their own data, and leverage these models to deliver new generative AI powered experiences.

Google Cloud allows customers to control their data with enterprise-grade capabilities such as data isolation, data protection, sovereignty, and compliance support.

With Vertex AI, and leveraging the Built with Google Cloud AI program, GitLab will be able to leverage Google's foundation models to provide customers with AI-powered offerings within its cloud infrastructure.

This allows GitLab to maintain its commitment to protecting user privacy by containing customer intellectual property and source code within GitLab's cloud infrastructure, the company states.

GitLab plans to improve its customers' DevSecOps workflow efficiency by 10x, by applying AI-assisted workflows to all users involved in delivering software value. By implementing AI-powered capabilities throughout the software development lifecycle, GitLab aims to deliver value across the enterprise, enabling faster business transformation, without sacrificing security or privacy.

This first experimental feature leveraging Google Cloud's generative AI models is called 'Explain this Vulnerability'. This capability empowers companies to make security a cross-organisational effort, by providing users with a natural language description of vulnerabilities found in their code and a recommendation for how to resolve them at the time of detection. 

'Explain this Vulnerability' can be used by developers, as well as security and operations teams, allowing customers to stay secure while remaining efficient and improving speed to delivery.

It joins GitLab's experimental-level features such as Explain this Code, Summarize Issue Comments, and Summarize Merge Request Changes, and its existing AI-enabled features, Code Suggestions, and Suggested Reviewers, which are focused on driving developer productivity beyond code development, and improving workflow automation for all users throughout the software development lifecycle.

GitLab's 2023 DevSecOps Report: Security Without Sacrifices, found that developers are increasingly using AI for testing and security - with 62% of developers using AI/ML to check code, up from 51% in 2022. Additionally, 36% of developers use AI/ML for code review, up from 31% the previous year. GitLab is focused on creating privacy-first solutions that enable enterprises and other highly regulated organisations to adopt AI/ML throughout the software development lifecycle.

June Yang, VP of Cloud AI and Industry Solutions at Google Cloud, comments, "Organisations today are required to deliver software faster than ever before to remain competitive while requiring a stronger security posture in order to maintain customer, investor, and stakeholder trust.

"Together with GitLab, we'll be able to deliver generative AI functionality that empowers our joint customers to increase delivery velocity without sacrificing security."

David DeSanto, Chief Product Officer at GitLab, says, "GitLab's vision for generative AI is grounded in privacy, security, and transparency. Our partnership with Google Cloud enables GitLab to offer private and secure AI-powered features, while maintaining customer data in our cloud infrastructure.

"This allows us to harness the power of Google Cloud, while continuing GitLab's privacy-first approach to customer data. We look forward to our continued collaboration to deliver enterprise-grade AI-assisted functionalities to joint customers."

About Google Cloud
Google Cloud accelerates every organisation's ability to digitally transform its business. We deliver enterprise-grade solutions that leverage Google's cutting-edge technology – all on the cleanest cloud in the industry. Customers in more than 200 countries and territories turn to Google Cloud as their trusted partner to enable growth and solve their most critical business problems.