The rise of AI-powered coding assistants has completely changed how developers work. What started as a breakthrough for productivity is now adding real pressure to already strained security teams. We’re not just building faster—we’re building faster on top of increasingly fragile foundations.

AI-generated code is introducing vulnerabilities at a scale we’ve never seen before. While developers were quick to embrace tools like ChatGPT when they launched in late 2022, the consequences are now catching up. According to GitHub, by June 2023, 92% of U.S. developers were using AI tools for personal or work projects. Speed and convenience made adoption inevitable—but they also masked deeper risks.

Surveys show a sharp disconnect between perception and reality. While 75% of developers said they believed AI-generated code was more secure than human-written code, more than half of that code contained errors. Worse, 80% of developers admitted they don’t follow secure AI coding policies, missing critical chances to prevent those errors early.

A surge in code churn and copy/paste patterns is making things worse. New research from GitClear, based on 153 million lines of code from 2020 to 2023, shows code churn—changes made within two weeks of writing—could double between 2021 and 2024. At the same time, copy/paste coding is rising faster than any other kind of change. That’s a clear move away from DRY (Don’t Repeat Yourself) practices, which increases code complexity and makes systems harder to maintain.

Security debt is growing faster than teams can pay it down. Vulnerabilities are moving through the pipeline before teams have time to react. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) estimates that fixing flaws during testing takes 15x longer than fixing them early. During deployment or maintenance? Up to 100x longer.

What we’re seeing now is a clash between early productivity gains and late-stage maintainability pain. AI tools help get code out the door, but keeping that code secure is an entirely different challenge. Without better processes in place at the start of the SDLC, security and engineering teams are left chasing problems after they’ve already done damage.

The conversation is starting to shift from how fast we can build software to how safely we can scale it. And that means organizations are being forced to rethink how they manage developer risk. It’s not just a technical challenge anymore—it’s a business one.