It’s the exact opposite for me. It’s mostly a regurgitation of already well-known designs, and rarely does it ever come up with something “new”. For the rare few times it “does”, it’s just my own input echoed back at me… The world’s most expensive rubber duck, now with idea-stealing as a feature

I see clueless people going back-n-forth with their AI and a lot of useless crap comes out. I see capable people do it and useable products come out. The capable people think everyone is getting the same output they are, but GIGO still applies. That said, AI has brought more of the engineering team to the coding table, instead of 5 people knowing what needs to be built, all yelling at Bob to build it. For better or for worse. Now, there are two or three Bobs, but still one SuperBob. (Who now gets to babysit the LowerBobs.)

The back and forth, contextualizing, nourishing it with examples… I see them as mirrors. You give them an image with words and they reflect it back at you with details that were missing. Opus and Fable see the gaps and fill them all while engaging you in a conversation that allows them to fill even more gaps.

I tend to agree with @jb55 They are statistical models, and sure, their code might be average, but the average is composed over complete knowledge over the existing language and it's api, your codebase and lots of discussions regarding solutions for implementing X feature. The rare breakdowns or configuration mistakes, which would happen to a programmer as well, as easily fixable if you run performance benchmarks. Or put another way, if you combine them with good taste and deterministic checks, the result is impressive.