New Delhi, Jan. 27 -- Mphasis, a mid-tier IT services firm, using AI agents to directly decode and modernise legacy COBOL applications, is reducing modernisation costs from about $7 per line of code to $3, it said.

This approach breaks from the IT industry's usual practice of wrapping artificial intelligence around decades-old software, according to Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Nitin Rakesh, who described cosmetic AI overlays on legacy systems as little more than 'window dressing'.

"Software will eat software," he said, referring to using artificial intelligence to continuously dismantle and re-engineer legacy systems rather than simply layering new technologies over them.

Across the industry, many enterprises are adding artificial in...