JetBrains AI Assistant panned in JetBrains Marketplace

Despite having been downloaded nearly 23 million times, the JetBrains AI Assistant has received bad reviews on the company’s JetBrains Marketplace website, prompting JetBrains to remove some of the reviews.

Unveiled in December 2023, the JetBrains AI Assistant rates only 2.3 stars out of a possible five stars on the company’s ratings system, with 851 total ratings as of May 1. “I’ve been a long-time user of JetBrains IDEs and generally appreciate the thoughtful tooling they offer,” reviewer Haso Keric wrote. “Unfortunately, the AI Assistant doesn’t live up to the same standard. It feels bolted on rather than integrated, and it quickly becomes more of a novelty than a productivity tool.” Several reviewers described the tool as having uneven auto-completion performance, while several others said that their reviews had been removed. “My previous comment was deleted without any specific reason. Jetbrains seems to be deleting negative reviews, which destroyed my confidence and trust in this company. They do not value their customers and their feedback anymore,” reviewer Juraj Nemec wrote.

In a Reddit post under the name of mutegazer, a JetBrains representative said some reviews were removed because they involved an already-solved issue, while others were removed because of policy violations such as swearing. Negative or positive posts about current AI Assistant behavior have remained, mutegazer wrote. The JetBrains rep acknowledged that the company could have handled the removals better. “Nuking several reviews at once without a heads-up looked shady,” mutegazer wrote. “At least, we should’ve posted a notice and provided more details to the authors.”

Also, mutegazer revealed JetBrains’ next steps, promising the company would:

Consider the options to approach this whole case of major updates differently.

Explore per-version reviews or mark reviews as “Resolved” and link to related YouTrack issues instead of deleting.

Commit to clearer, faster communications in general, and especially whenever we moderate content.

The JetBrains rep also urged reviewers to keep the feedback coming. The JetBrains AI Assistant has received some positive reviews. “I think this plugin is really great, I find it useful and it became a must have in my development toolkit. Thanks,” reviewer Jonathan Gafner wrote. “Really, I love this. Thanks,” reviewer Dharmendra Kumar Singh wrote, giving the AI Assistant five stars. Another five-star reviewer, Jochen Issing, wrote, “I have just used your AI and I was amazed.”