Can AI help solve the COBOL code crisis?

OpenAI reported that its latest models, including GPT-6.1 Sol, showed "substantial improvements" in migrating legacy code such as COBOL into modern languages like C++, Java, Kotlin, Python, and Rust while preserving behavior, with GPT-6.1 Sol reaching 87 percent behavior preservation accuracy at low reasoning effort and 98 percent at higher reasoning. Experts told The Verge that such benchmarks are far from enabling safe replacement of critical legacy systems, stressing that rewriting code is not the same as replacing a system and that breaking complex systems into replaceable units remains the key difficulty. OpenAI spokesperson Oscar Haines acknowledged legacy code "is still far from a solved problem."