How Disney is pushing employees to use AI: streaks, 'max vibes' badges, and manager check-ins

• Disney is encouraging its employees to use AI with milestone badges and check-in messages.
• Staffers are using the company's AI Adoption Dashboard to see how they stack up to their peers.
• One software engineer said they hadn't "written any code in months" by themselves.

If you're a Disney employee who doesn't regularly use AI, you might get a "check-in" message from your boss.

That's what happened to one high-ranking software engineer who had used AI tools only once in the previous month.

"I want to make sure the investment we've made in these tools actually translates into support for you," the engineer's manager said in a message viewed by Business Insider.

Disney has been exploring various ways to encourage AI usage among its employees.

In recent months, Disney has given certain tech staffers access to its "AI Adoption Dashboard." Some AI aficionados are using chatbots like Claude and Cursor hundreds of thousands of times a week by invoking AI agents and so-called agent swarms.

One streaming tech staffer referred to the AI dashboard as a "leaderboard." Disney has gamified the dashboard with "milestones" for employees to unlock, including "streaks" based on how many consecutive workdays staffers use Cursor or Claude.

A person familiar with Disney's strategy said the company isn't trying to incentivize high usage or waste. Instead, they said the dashboard is intended to help staffers use AI tools efficiently and effectively.

Staffers strive for AI 'streaks'

Disney has implemented a version of the streaks feature popularized by Snapchat.

A screenshot of Disney's AI dashboard viewed by Business Insider showed that a 10-day streak of using AI tools was viewed as an "uncommon" milestone, achieved by about 12% of users; while a 20-day streak was "rare," with less than 5% reaching it; and a 30-day streak was an "epic" milestone, at 2% of users.

There's also a "Max Vibes" milestone for users who are "delivering ROIs and Max Vibes," though it's unclear what that means.

Disney doesn't directly reward employees for using AI. Still, some employees say they feel pressure to "tokenmaxx," since some tech workers see heavy AI usage as a sign of skill or proficiency. Tokens are basic units of data processed by AI models, and companies are billed based on how many they use.

"I wanted to see where I was in comparison, token-usage wise," one software engineer said of the AI dashboard.

"Initially, I wanted to be higher, but now I don't really care," they added.

Ensuring 'everyone feels equipped' on AI

Not all Mouse House tech staffers are aboard the AI train.

The manager who sent the message about the engineer's AI usage said it was part of "a broader check-in" on "how people are using the Al tools we've invested in."

"Adoption has been uneven across the organization, and I want to make sure everyone feels equipped and supported to get real value from these tools — not just access to them," the manager's note said.

The note asked the software engineer to share the following details:

• Which Al tools you currently have access to
• How you've been using them — or what's made it hard to get started
• Any barriers you've run into (skills, workflow fit, trust in the output, unclear policies, etc.)
• What would make it easier for you to use them more regularly

"I think there's a genuine opportunity for you to use Al to make your work faster, higher quality, and higher impact," the manager said. "My goal is to make sure nothing is quietly getting in the way of that."

'No handwritten code'

Four Disney tech employees said the company is increasingly exhorting staffers to use AI, particularly for coding.

"No handwritten code — that was the push," one software engineer said. "I haven't written any code in months."

They said that "watching out for costs and optimizing for tokens feels secondary."

Two other streaming staffers said they weren't worried about how many tokens they used. One said their manager told them that if they hit their budget, they should request more.

Another longtime tech staffer, who described themselves as a "middle of the pack" AI user, said these tools had helped them save time and knock out small tasks they might not otherwise have time for.

"I don't trust AI to work fully unsupervised, but plans are to replace a lot of manual tasks I do to automate tests with agentic skills," this person said.

Although the engineer said AI was boosting their productivity, they said they still felt "buried in work."