Blanca Cruz / AFP via Getty Images; Illustration by Pavlo Gonchar/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
- Disney plans to dump Microsoft's GitHub Copilot while bringing OpenAI's Codex aboard.
- Eight Disney employees said they didn't rely on GitHub Copilot, which faces stiff competition.
- Claude and Cursor have become beloved inside the Mouse House as tech staffers push AI adoption.
Disney has decided it no longer needs a Copilot on its AI coding journey.
The Mouse House is ditching Microsoft's GitHub Copilot and several other AI coding tools in August in the US, tech leaders told select staffers on Tuesday afternoon, according to a screenshot of an internal message viewed by Business Insider. These changes don't apply internationally, a Disney tech leader told employees.
A breakup with Disney is the latest headache for Microsoft's Copilot, which "lags behind" rivals like ChatGPT and Claude in adoption, as Business Insider's Ashley Stewart has reported. GitHub Copilot is the coding assistant in Microsoft's AI product suite.
Microsoft's loss is Sam Altman's win. Disney is preparing to adopt OpenAI's Codex coding tool, according to the screenshot. The message didn't give a timeline for the tool's introduction.
Disney will also keep staffers' access to Anthropic's Claude Enterprise and Cursor, while dropping two AI tools from Amazon: the agentic code editor Kiro and the AI assistant Q. (Claude will also no longer be accessible through the Amazon Web Services Bedrock platform.)
Copilot's challenges
Eight Disney tech employees told Business Insider that they rarely or never used GitHub Copilot.
One product manager said GitHub Copilot produced code that was "needlessly complex" and required clean-up.
A longtime software engineer said their access to GitHub Copilot had "lapsed for lack of use."
"Once I got Cursor and Kiro, there was no need to use it," this staffer said.
Copilot frustrated some users last month by updating its pricing to charge customers based on their AI token usage, which is industry-standard. The company said GitHub Copilot's request-based model was "no longer sustainable" as it unveiled the shift.
However, a Microsoft executive said in June that this move helped fuel the "best month ever" for the GitHub developer platform, Business Insider previously reported.
Microsoft has set out to revamp GitHub while shaking up its Copilot teams to help its many Copilot tools compete with rivals from OpenAI and Anthropic.
Disney staffers are enchanted by Claude and Cursor
Claude and Cursor have become fan favorites among Disney tech employees, as some superusers use agents to invoke those AI tools tens of thousands of times per day, Business Insider previously reported.
One high-level software engineer said their AI tool usage was "probably around 80% Claude at the terminal when coding."
Disney's streaming leaders created an AI adoption dashboard to track usage and have encouraged tech employees to use it to work faster, Business Insider previously reported.
"The No. 1 thing is to increase velocity," or the speed of output, a high-level AI staffer said.
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