Disney is pulling back the curtain on its internal use of AI, allowing employees to see who is doing the token maxing.
Business Insider revealed that the Mouse House has given some of its technical staff access to the AI Adoption Dashboard, which tracks token usage across AI coding tools Cursor and Claude.
Dashboards provide staff with rich data, including how many employees are actively using AI, how many requests are made, and how many tokens are used over a period of time.
The dashboard also shows the most active AI users by request made and token used, according to a screenshot of the dashboard seen by Business Insider. One streaming technology staffer called this a “leaderboard.”
The dashboard shows that the largest AI power users make an average of hundreds of requests per day and spend tens of millions of tokens.
Tracking AI usage has led to a trend of so-called “token maxing,” where software engineers compete with their colleagues to maximize the usage of AI tokens when using chatbots. However, there is a debate in the tech world about whether to encourage mass use of tokens given the associated costs. A person familiar with Disney’s approach to the dashboard said the dashboard is not designed to encourage heavy usage, but rather to help employees use resources efficiently and effectively.
Disney employees are being encouraged by managers to use AI tools more frequently, streaming technology staff said.
“They’re celebrating it now, but we’ll see how long that lasts,” the official said of Disney’s use of AI.
According to the dashboard, one Disney employee called Claude about 460,000 times in nine business days in mid-April. This equates to approximately 51,000 times per day.
Another streaming technology staff member familiar with the AI Adoption Dashboard said the high usage rate is likely due to autonomous agents.
The employee said the company is monitoring AI usage and trying to “minimize wasted token usage,” but said he wasn’t concerned about that, saying Disney would “just give them more allocation if a cap is set.”
Disney’s evolving AI strategy
Disney employees aren’t the first to have access to AI usage dashboards. Meta employees created a similar internal dashboard to track usage of Claude tokens, nicknamed “Claudeonomics,” before the company shut down in early April, The Information reported, adding that Meta used 60 trillion tokens in 30 days.
Meanwhile, Visa is encouraging its employees to use AI and giving prizes to power users. The payments giant was using 1.9 trillion tokens per month as of March, the company told Business Insider.
Disney’s AI implementation dashboard has been around for months, predating Josh D’Amaro’s appointment as CEO, two streaming engineers said. D’Amaro took the top job in mid-March after running Disney’s parks and cruise operations.
D’Amaro will have to decide what Disney’s AI strategy will be now that Disney’s blockbuster partnership with OpenAI has collapsed. Disney’s deal with OpenAI will give employees access to ChatGPT, while also allowing short AI-generated videos to be published on Disney+.
The Mouse House has become more AI-ready in the last year by providing employees with tools like Claude, Cursor and the DisneyGPT chatbot for internal requests, multiple staffers previously told Business Insider.
AI is a “top priority” for Disney, a senior employee with direct knowledge of the company’s AI strategy previously told Business Insider.