Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks Is Talking About AI in D&D Again

Chris Cocks, the CEO of Hasbro, is talking about the usage of AI in Dungeons & Dragons again. In a recent interview with Semafor, Cocks once again brought up potential usage of AI in D&D and other Hasbro brands. Cocks described himself as an "AI bull" and offered up a potential subscription service that uses AI to enrich D&D campaigns as a way to integrate AI. The full section of Semafor's interview is below:

Smartphone screens are not the toy industry’s only technology challenge. Cocks uses artificial intelligence tools to generate storylines, art, and voices for his D&D characters and hails AI as “a great leveler for user-generated content.”

Current AI platforms are failing to reward creators for their work, “but I think that’s solvable,” he says, describing himself as “an AI bull” who believes the technology will extend the reach of Hasbro’s brands. That could include subscription services letting other Dungeon Masters enrich their D&D campaigns, or offerings to let parents customize Peppa Pig animations. “It’s supercharging fandom,” he says, “and I think that’s just net good for the brand.”

The D&D design team and others involved with D&D at Wizards of the Coast have repeatedly stood by a statement posted back in 2023 that said that D&D was made by humans for humans. The full, official stance on AI in D&D by the D&D team can be found below.

For 50 years, D&D has been built on the innovation, ingenuity, and hard work of talented people who sculpt a beautiful, creative game. That isn't changing. Our internal guidelines remain the same with regards to artificial intelligence tools: We require artists, writers, and creatives contributing to the D&D TTRPG to refrain from using AI generative tools to create final D&D products. We work with some of the most talented artists and creatives in the world, and we believe those people are what makes D&D great.

 

[Oofta]

Since another "AI is evil" thread is soon to begin, guess it's time to get my thoughts in before the thread is shut down.

AI is a tool. Just like fire, the water wheel, the internal combustion engine, spreadsheets. Technology changes the way we live and work. It will continue to do so. As with every technological change there will be winners and losers, people who underestimate the impact and those that overestimate it. I remember reading articles about how LLMs were going to replace software development* until people actually started using it and realized it could not. At least not yet.

For me? I would like an AI assistant at times to either do stuff I don't want to do or cannot. I've used AI art a few times for miscellaneous things I would never pay an artist for. I occasionally want help with inspiration or filling out my campaign ideas. For those things I don't really see AI being any different from any other tool or resource I've used throughout the decades. But I also have to admit that as much as I like to think I'm creative, there really is nothing new under the sun. If I'm being generous there are maybe a dozen story arcs we can use for D&D and the best we can do is add a bit of different flavor to each of them.

Maybe someday we'll have an AI good enough to be actually create engaging and worthwhile gameplay. More likely we'll be able to tell an AI to create a city map or similar for us that is a good starting point. But even if we had an AI DM, I would still want to be a DM because I enjoy it. On the other hand maybe AI generated players wouldn't spend five minutes every time their turn comes up debating every single possible option they could take this turn while asking for clarification on what color the rug their standing on is.

We don't know what the future will bring. I remain cautiously optimistic but my hope is that instead of replacing mod writers, artists and DMs everywhere it will simply make us better at what we do and more productive.

*The imminent end of the need for people to do software development has been predicted since at least the 80s.

 

[SlyFlourish]

I like random tables, good source material, and my own brain. I wrote about it here and talked about it here.

I don’t know what Cocks thinks he’s going to be able to do to solve the problem of being built on people’s material without their permission. Even training off of the work WOTC commissioned isn’t great. As a writer for WOTC in the past, I wouldn’t expect the work I write for them to fuel some AI generator of theirs. That wasn’t what I had in mind twelve years ago. Can they do so legally? Sure. Am I happy about it? Nope.

And that’s just one problem:

• LLMs burn a ton of power - way more than rolling a die on a random table.
• LLMs and generative AI is leading further to income disparity (take a look at Chat GPT’s valuations compared to how much writers got paid to write the material both critical to their model and yet not being paid for).
• LLMs lie all the time. They have terrible recall (they miss a lot of stuff in the source material). Even when asking LLMs to generate stuff for your game, it forgets a lot of what it knew about your world or whatever.

The other side is that I just don’t want to use it for stuff like this. I like prepping my game. I like rolling on random tables. I like not needing digital tools to do so. I don’t even like using spreadsheets to check my encounter balance. The physical aspects of the hobby are one of its greatest strengths.

This isn’t it.

Outside of the new Starter Set and the 5.2 SRD, whatever WOTC wants to do is up to them. I really don’t care. I’ve got enough material to run games weekly for the rest of my life.

But if someone were asking me? Yeah, I don’t want this.

 

[Stormonu]

I've been using AI for making images and as an editor for my (wordy) D&D documents.

I've also been looking at using AI as a DM for soloing adventuring.

AI has its uses - for D&D I'd prefer to NOT see it used to generate content such as commercial adventures or pictures, but I would enjoy it as a DM's tool/assistant to help me get past mental blocks or putting together player handouts, or in the times when I can't get others together to work as a DM to allow me to do solo play.

 

[Christian Hoffer]

When it comes to AI, I personally believe it's an empty buzzword that encompasses too many things. There are some AI programs that are little more than glorified macros that automate certain tasks that once required a human touch. There are some AI programs that are little more than complex search engines, able to pull out more intuitive and "correct" answers from a database. And then there's generative AI that's designed to replace creativity.

I don't necessarily have a problem with the search engine equivalent of AI as a D&D product. If I want to know the optimal build for a GOOlock at Level 5, there's nothing unethical about a search engine telling me that as opposed to some loudmouth on YT. But Cocks keeps trying to jam in generative AI into D&D and that's....just so antithetical to what makes D&D fantastic.

 

[mearls]

The question for me is simple - What problem is it solving?

WotC wasn't able to give a clear answer to that with the revised core rulebooks. That doesn't give me confidence that something that is much more complex will be easier for them to solve.

 

[mearls]

To pull a random example of how I use AI: It's very useful to me as a search tool. I can ask it a question like, "Are sharks territorial?" and go from there. That's useful for concepting out a monster. The current AI models also have a deep understanding of D&D rules and content. I'm not sure what WotC could sell that hasn't already been integrated into Grok, ChatGPT, etc.

 

[Sorcerers Apprentice]

The question for me is simple - What problem is it solving?

I think the long-term ambition is to solve the DM shortage. And of course the ongoing problem that D&D is under-monetized.

 

[Charlaquin]

To pull a random example of how I use AI: It's very useful to me as a search tool. I can ask it a question like, "Are sharks territorial?" and go from there.

That’s a pretty hit and miss way to use it too, because LLMs very frequently give flat-out wrong answers to such queries.

 

[The Soloist]

Many solo RPG players who want to replicate the 'choose your own adventure' model are already using ChatGPT extensively. At first, it was clunky, but they are slowly getting better results. The main drawback is that the AI forgets story information after a while, and they have to constantly remind it it is playing a D&D game. It tends to wander off-topic. AI-Soloist created their own Facebook group because the traditional pen-and-paper soloist didn't want to go down that path.

I'm a creative who worked on computers for years. I purposefully draw my solo maps by hand, use pen and pencils to write my solo stories and roll physical dice to get away from the screen.

Having said that, I can see a future not far off in which my wife and I use a D&D AI-GM to play a WoTC module together. For example, an AI conversion of Lost Mines of Phandelver in which we play two characters each. We used to play Diablo II together, but the lack of story and mystery turned me off. Seems like the technology is finally getting advanced enough that we can do that again, but with a far more immersive experience. If that is what Cooks is talking about, we will certainly try it.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

I'm going against the grain here and say this is excellent news as long as certain boundaries are set up. Don't use it for art or writing in books, but for stuff like customizable art for your character or homebrew settings, random adventure generators, maybe even an AI generated video of a described battle in your campaign, heck custom Sigil minis even.

AI us not the enemy, it's just a useful tool.