{
  "id": 7337379,
  "title": "Your AI coding spend bought 25% more output. Duplication rose 81%.",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/09/14/your-ai-coding-spend-bought-25-more-output-duplication-rose-81",
  "topic": "ai",
  "section": "AI",
  "published": "2026-09-14T14:39:14.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "The New Stack",
    "slug": "the-new-stack",
    "url": "https://thenewstack.io/ai-coding-duplication-rose/"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "Since AI tools arrived on the software scene, many companies have pinned their hopes on them. However, the tone has shifted recently as CFOs and CTOs have demanded visibility into AI spend. IBM's Gary Cohn recently said the ROI has \"not been nearly as high as people might think.\"\n\nGitClear analyzed 623 million code changes from 2023 to 2026 and found that heavy AI users gained only 25% on their prior velocity, far from the claimed 10x increases. These heavy users still out-produced non-AI users by 4 to 10x, but this improvement was present before AI tooling was adopted. Most teams will face harder usage limits and may not sustain the usage levels.\n\nRefactoring, a key factor in maintainability, fell to 3.8% of changed lines in 2026 from 21% in 2022. Code duplication rose 81% over the same period, with multiple expressions of the same concept becoming more common. Productivity gains in terms of output are not guaranteed to translate into value for the organization or its customers.\n\nTechnical practices like test automation and refactoring have become less prioritized as developers aim for faster output. The data suggests that the promise of 10x boosts with AI coding assistants has not materialized. Instead, the software industry may be returning to a code-and-fix era. Without understanding the inherent properties of value streams, organizations risk paying a painful price when trying to track ROI.",
  "summary": "Since they arrived on the scene, a great swathe of the software industry has pinned its hopes on AI tools, The post Your AI coding spend bought 25% more output. Duplication rose 81%. appeared first on The New Stack .",
  "key_points": [
    "AI coding spend yielded only 25% more output, not the claimed 10x increase",
    "Code duplication increased by 81% from 2022 to 2026",
    "Refactoring decreased to 3.8% of changed lines in 2026 from 21% in 2022"
  ],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}