Disney is dropping Microsoft's GitHub Copilot in the United States in August and adding OpenAI's Codex, according to an internal company message reported by Business Insider. The decision applies only to US operations, a Disney tech leader told employees on Tuesday afternoon.
The media giant is also phasing out two Amazon AI tools: the agentic code editor Kiro and the AI assistant Q. Staffers will retain access to Anthropic's Claude Enterprise and the code editor Cursor, though employees will no longer access Claude through Amazon Web Services' Bedrock platform.
Eight Disney tech employees told Business Insider that they rarely or never used GitHub Copilot prior to the shift. One product manager noted that Copilot generated "needlessly complex" code that required clean-up. A longtime software engineer said their access to GitHub Copilot had lapsed due to lack of use, noting that Cursor and Kiro eliminated the need for it.
Developer Tool Usage
Copilot frustrated some users last month by updating its pricing model to charge based on AI token usage rather than requests. Microsoft stated the request-based model was no longer sustainable, though an executive said in June that the change contributed to the best month ever for the GitHub developer platform. Microsoft has since moved to revamp GitHub and reorganize its Copilot teams to compete with OpenAI and Anthropic.
Claude and Cursor have become widely used among Disney technical staff, with superusers invoking the tools tens of thousands of times per day, Business Insider reported. One high-level software engineer estimated that about 80 percent of their terminal coding usage relied on Claude.
Streaming leaders at Disney created an internal AI adoption dashboard to track usage across teams and encourage faster software output, with a high-level AI staffer noting the primary goal is to increase velocity. The internal message gave no timeline for when Codex will be introduced.
