Paramount Skydance is putting limits on Claude spending for tech staffers as the company looks to cut down on wasteful AI usage.<\/p>\n
David Ellison’s company<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n “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.<\/p>\n Paramount’s move is part of a trend of companies putting limits on AI usage<\/a>. Disney has told employees to avoid “tokenmaxxing,”<\/a> or maximizing AI usage without an eye toward productivity. Tech giant Microsoft<\/a> also wants to crack down on AI token overuse, which CEO Satya Nadella said can be “addictive.”<\/p>\n 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.”<\/p>\n 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.”<\/p>\n Users who exceed their monthly quota can request more tokens by filling out a form, four Paramount employees said.<\/p>\n Despite putting in Claude token limits, Paramount is “definitely still encouraging AI,” the person familiar with the company’s strategy said.<\/p>\n Token limits cause ‘a fair amount of hubbub’<\/p>\n Some tech staffers were caught off guard by the new limits.<\/p>\n “There was a fair amount of hubbub around the change,” one streaming employee said, though they added that it “won’t really affect me” since they use only a fraction of their monthly token limit.<\/p>\n The senior AI leader’s message thanked employees for “patience as we continue building out the right guardrails for responsible AI use at Paramount.”<\/p>\n Paramount’s cost-conscious move comes as its $110 billion merger with Warner Bros. Discovery<\/a> is on hold after an antitrust lawsuit<\/a> from 12 states.<\/p>\n