How Are We Doing With Using AI-Based Programming Assistants For Privacy-Related Code Generation? The Developers' Experience

Abstract

With generative AI becoming widespread, the existence of AI-based programming assistants for developers is no surprise. Developers increasingly use them for their work, including generating code to fulfil the data protection requirements (privacy) of the apps they build. We wanted to know if the reality is the same as expectations of AI-based programming assistants when trying to fulfil software privacy requirements, and the challenges developers face when using AI-based programming assistants and how these can be improved. To this end, we conducted a survey with 51 professional developers worldwide. We found that AI-based programming assistants need to be improved in order for developers to better trust them with generating code that ensures privacy. In this paper, we provide some recommendations including model and system-level improvements and some key further research directions to improve AI-based programming assistants for developing secure code.