David Ellison's Paramount wants employees using AI tools like Claude, within reason.
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Paramount Skydance is putting limits on Claude spending for tech staffers as the company looks to cut down on wasteful AI usage.David Ellison's company has capped how many Claude tokens users can use each month, three Paramount employees said. Tokens are units of AI usage and are generally how companies like Claude-maker Anthropic bill customers."As part of ongoing AI governance, monthly spend limits have been applied to Claude accounts to ensure controlled spending and effective usage across the organization," a senior AI leader said in an early-August message in Paramount's #claude-users Slack channel.Paramount's move is part of a trend of companies putting limits on AI usage. Disney has told employees to avoid "tokenmaxxing," or maximizing AI usage without an eye toward productivity. Tech giant Microsoft also wants to crack down on AI token overuse, which CEO Satya Nadella said can be "addictive."The senior Paramount AI leader said on Slack that "most users won't notice any change to their day-to-day experience" and added that tech leadership still "wanted to give everyone a heads-up."A person familiar with the change said these monthly AI usage limits aren't team-specific and are instead "tailored by person and by need." They added that the limits are "more of an art than a science."Users who exceed their monthly quota can request more tokens by filling out a form, four Paramount employees said.
