Disney drops Microsoft's GitHub Copilot, adopts OpenAI's Codex

Disney has decided to discontinue its use of Microsoft's GitHub Copilot and several other AI coding tools, effective August in the United States, according to an internal message viewed by Business Insider.

Tech leaders informed select staffers of the decision on Tuesday afternoon. A Disney tech leader told employees that these changes do not apply internationally.

Microsoft's Loss, OpenAI's Gain

The breakup with Disney adds to challenges 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 within Microsoft's AI product suite.

Disney is preparing to adopt OpenAI's Codex coding tool, according to the screenshot. The message did not provide a timeline for the tool's introduction.

Tools Retained and Dropped

Disney will maintain staffers' access to:

• Anthropic's Claude Enterprise
• Cursor

The company is dropping two AI tools from Amazon:

• Kiro (the agentic code editor)
• Amazon Q (the AI assistant)

Additionally, Claude will no longer be accessible through the Amazon Web Services Bedrock platform.

Copilot's Challenges

Eight Disney tech employees told Business Insider 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 reported that 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.

Last month, Copilot frustrated some users by updating its pricing to charge customers based on AI token usage—an industry-standard model. The company stated that GitHub Copilot's request-based model was "no longer sustainable" as it announced 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 restructuring its Copilot teams to help its various Copilot tools compete with rivals from OpenAI and Anthropic.

Disney Staffers Favor Claude and Cursor

Claude and Cursor have become fan favorites among Disney tech employees. 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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