Welcome to the future, where the vibes are bad in almost every meaningful respect — but where you do, at the very least, get to "vibe code," or use an AI model to write code and even build entire pieces of software.
But rarely does the process go smoothly enough for prime time. The jury's still out on whether experienced programmers actually benefit from using AI coding assistants, and the tech's shortcomings are even more obvious when it's being relied on by untrained amateurs who openly embrace the whole shtick of working off mainly "vibes."
Nothing illustrates that last point better than the fact that some veteran programmers are apparently now making a killing by fixing these AI-hallucinated disasters, as spotlighted by 404 Media, which interviewed a few of these canny opportunists.
"I started fixing vibe-coded projects because I noticed a growing number of developers and small teams struggling to refine AI-generated code that was functional but lacked the polish or 'vibe' needed to align with their vision," Hamid Siddiqi, a programmer who offers to "fix your vibe code" on Fiverr, told the outlet.
Siddiqi added that these clients need help with everything from horrendously optimized code to botched AI-generated UIs.
And business is booming.
"I've been offering vibe coding fixer services for about two years now, starting in late 2023," Siddiqi told 404. "Currently, I work with around 15-20 clients regularly, with additional one-off projects throughout the year."
AI models are notorious for hallucinating and generally not doing what you intend them to do. One man found this out the hard way after his vibe-coding AI wiped out his business's entire database. Nonetheless, even the largest tech firms have embraced using AI coding assistants. Google CEO Sundar Pichai claimed that as much as 25 percent of the company's code is now AI-generated; Microsoft chief Satya Nadella did one better and claimed that it was 30 percent at his company.
Some research has suggested that relying on the tech does the opposite of making workflows more efficient, as programmers have to constantly double and triple check the AI's error-laden outputs. One recent study found that programmers who used tools like Anthropic's Claude were a whopping 19 percent slower, and ended up using less than half of the AI's suggestions.
It's no surprise, then, that Siddiqi is far from alone. Searching "vibe code fixer" on Fiverr, which is just one of many popular gig work platforms, returns over 230 results. Fixing "vibe code," or some permutation thereof, is explicitly mentioned by many of these programmers describing their services.
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