A Good AI Code Reviewer Knows When to Stay Quiet

Short summary

AI code reviewers can catch real bugs but also generate noise that slows teams down. GitHub's Copilot review now optimizes for accuracy and signal over thoroughness, staying silent 29% of the time when there's nothing consequential to flag. Teams should track resolved findings, dismissal rate, and human review time rather than raw comment count, and run deterministic checks before contextual AI review.

• •AI code review value depends on codebase, context, and verification cost — not comment volume
• •GitHub Copilot review provides actionable feedback 71% of the time and intentionally stays silent otherwise
• •Track resolved findings, dismissal rate, and human review time; use deterministic checks before AI contextual review

Generated with AI, which can make mistakes.