San Francisco — OpenAI Says AI Can Now Modernize Aging COBOL Code

OpenAI says its newest AI models can meaningfully speed up the work of converting COBOL-based systems into modern programming languages, though the technology has not yet proven capable of fully retiring the six-decade-old code still running banks, airlines and government agencies such as the Internal Revenue Service, according to The Verge.

What did OpenAI announce about legacy code migration?

On October 19, OpenAI said it had made "substantial improvements" in its latest models' ability to migrate software written in older programming languages into modern code, The Verge reported. The company said the gains could help organizations "maintaining and modernizing older systems," and it specifically named COBOL as one of the languages its models can now handle better.

Why is COBOL still running so much of the world's infrastructure?

COBOL — short for "common business-oriented language" — was created in 1959, according to The Verge. Nearly seven decades later, it remains embedded in critical systems worldwide, including at the IRS, at banks, at airlines and across government infrastructure. IBM has said COBOL remains the foundation for more than 40 percent of online banking, a figure cited in the Verge report. Organizations have largely avoided rewriting these systems because the code, while outdated, still works, and because the risk of breaking something essential during a rewrite has historically outweighed the benefit of modernizing it.

Can AI actually replace decades-old COBOL systems safely?

The Verge's own framing of the question is cautious: the outlet's headline asks whether AI can help solve the "COBOL code crisis," and its subhead answers directly — "Today is not that day." OpenAI's claim of improved migration performance is a step toward automating a process that has traditionally required specialized COBOL programmers, a shrinking pool of workers given the language's age. But the report does not describe OpenAI's tools as having completed a full-scale migration of a production banking, airline or government system, only that the models have gotten better at the underlying task of translating old code into new code.

COBOL by the numbers

• 1959: the year COBOL was developed, according to The Verge.
• 40%+: the share of online banking that IBM says still runs on COBOL, as cited in the Verge report.

What happens next for banks, airlines and agencies running COBOL?

The Verge's report notes that COBOL has survived "decades of efforts to banish it to history," and that the IRS was still running COBOL 73 computers as recently as 2022, per an image caption in the piece. OpenAI's claimed improvements suggest AI companies see legacy-code migration as a commercial opportunity, but the Verge report does not cite any institution that has used the new models to replace a live COBOL system. For now, the practical test — whether a bank, airline or federal agency trusts an AI-driven rewrite enough to switch over a system that moves money or processes tax returns — remains unanswered in the reporting.

The full Verge report is available at theverge.com.