Some Disney employees are accessing AI chatbots tens of thousands of times a day as managers encourage them to increase AI usage.
Disney AI Usage
Two Disney tech employees told Business Insider that they recently gained access to an “AI Adoption Dashboard.” This shows how the team is using AI coding tools Cursor and Claude with data like the number of employees actively using AI, the number of requests made, and the number of AI tokens used. Some have likened it to a leaderboard, which has resulted in “tokenmaxxing.” Users unlock milestones and streaks based on their usage.
Business Insider viewed screenshots of the dashboard that shows AI usage by about 4,800 product and tech employees at Disney Entertainment and ESPN across nine work days in April.
During that time, the biggest Claude user went through 234.2 million tokens. They called up the chatbot about 460,600 times — approximately 51,000 times per day.
Another employee used 287.1 million Cursor tokens over about 2,800 requests.
In total, employees went through 3.1 billion Claude tokens and 13.3 billion Cursor tokens in the nine days.
Val Bercovici, chief AI officer for memory storage company WEKA said Disney employee token usage is “in the middle of the bell curve,” which is “the sweet spot” for a company that isn’t just about tech. Bercovici noted the Claude numbers were “very low” compared to the Cursor numbers.
The large numbers are due to “swarms” of AI agents — automated bots that create and delegate tasks to other bots. Bercovici said these are “normal numbers for someone that’s invoked a lot of agent swarms.”
The estimated cost per one Disney employee is approximately $1 for 16,700 Claude tokens and $1 for 21,200 Cursor tokens, which Bercovici said was reasonable. That would bring Disney’s total estimated costs for all the tech employees to about $185,000 for Claude and $627,000 for Cursor.
Still, token usage and pricing varies based on the request and the model. Claude’s website says the cost of 1 million tokens ranges from 25 cents to $15.
One tech employee told Business Insider that managers are encouraging them to use AI tools more, even though that leads to higher costs. “They’re celebrating it now, but we’ll see how long that lasts,” said the staffer.
Just three months after announcing a three-year partnership with Disney, OpenAI shut down their Sora video platform. Disney said at the time, “We appreciate the constructive collaboration between our teams and what we learned from it, and we will continue to engage with AI platforms to find new ways to meet fans where they are while responsibly embracing new technologies that respect IP and the rights of creators.”
Walt Disney Imagineering was recently hiring an AI executive to lead the building of an “AI-first platform that will fundamentally change how Imagineering creates.”
How do you feel about The Walt Disney Company’s AI usage? Let us know on social media.
For the latest Disney Parks news and info, follow WDW News Today on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.
