Disney is encouraging streaming staffers to embrace AI while warning against wasteful token usage. Streaming leaders at the Mouse House have recently been pushing employees to boost their velocity and productivity by using AI, two senior tech employees told Business Insider.
"The No. 1 thing is to increase velocity," or the pace of output, a high-level, AI-focused employee said.
However, Disney doesn't want its employees to be "tokenmaxxing," Andre Rohe, Disney's EVP of product engineering, said in a Wednesday meeting, according to two tech staffers in attendance. "Tokenmaxxing" refers to maximizing AI token usage, regardless of its impact on productivity.
One software engineer shared their three main takeaways from what Disney streaming leaders said on the call:
- AI token tracking is meant to identify inefficient usage
- Disney wants to increase velocity when shipping features or delivering code
- Disney is focused on code quality and product resiliency, not just speed, and hopes to minimize AI-coded products that fail after their release
Disney has warmed to AI in the last year, providing employees with coding tools like Claude and Cursor while creating an AI Adoption Dashboard for staffers to track token usage. Some managers have sent check-in messages to software engineers who don't use AI.
Disney has also made clear that employees should be intentional about their AI usage. For example, a person familiar with the company's strategy said the AI dashboard isn't meant to incentivize high usage but rather to help staffers use AI tools efficiently and effectively.
Other major US companies, including Microsoft, are trying to limit unchecked AI token usage. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella recently called tokenmaxxing "addictive." Firms are realizing that burning through AI tokens can be wasteful and may not incentivize the right projects.
One of Disney's Hollywood rivals, Paramount Skydance, informed tech staffers on Wednesday that it would implement "per-user monthly spend limits" on AI tokens. A Paramount exec said the cap would have a "high limit," though.
Out with the OpenAI deal, in with agentic armies and AI affection
Disney surprised the media industry by inking a billion-dollar deal with OpenAI in December that would have licensed its iconic characters to the now-defunct Sora AI video app, while opening the door to put AI-generated videos on Disney+.
The Mouse House got a shock of its own in March when OpenAI canceled its Disney deal and shut down Sora, less than a week into Disney CEO Josh D'Amaro's tenure.
While D'Amaro hasn't struck a major AI deal since its OpenAI arrangement fell apart, Disney spoke with "more than a dozen partners" about ways to implement AI, The Wall Street Journal reported in March. Disney isn't sitting on its hands and waiting for an AI partner. Its top software engineers are using armies of AI agents to knock out coding projects, allowing them to accomplish far more than they could on their own.
Jason Cox, Disney's executive director of AI research and development and engineering, created an AI assistant he calls his "son" and said, in blog posts, that it had captured his "affection." It's unclear if Cox uses his AI chatbot for his work at Disney.