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]

So I guess WOTC is going back on the pledge from 2 years ago never to use AI again and to make those it contracts pinky-swear that they don't use it either?

They said they weren't going to use it for art in their books, they may have said they weren't going to use it to write modules but I don't recall.

There are a lot of other potential uses of AI such as a DM aid. Perhaps mod writers are using it for inspiration and a starting point so they can spend more time on writing engaging stories.

My money is still on buzzword name dropping for investors, throwing out words investors want to hear. As far as we know it's all still smoke and mirrors.

 

[SteveC]

I have a few thoughts, one being that nothing made for a child should be “not that great” if it can be helped in any possible way. The thinking of “well, they’re just 8” is opposite to my thinking.

I think you may have misunderstood what I was saying, and don't regularly deal with the media that's written for eight year-olds. The adventure was fine, and if I had to run it I could turn it into something really good. It wasn't at the level I would expect a fully fleshed-out product for adults to be. I still put my daughter to bed, and we listen to a podcast or book before bed. Right now she loves a series called The Boxcar Children. There are about a hundred of these books, each with three or so mysteries in them. And they're fine. She picks up on the mystery and usually solves it way before the characters do and complains about things like the characters never aging but they are fine. That's what I'm talking about.

In terms of adventures, there are a lot of people who run sandbox campaigns by rolling on a bunch of tables to create the world or the situations that the players find in. That's ... fine. I think that the state of AI created adventures is a little beyond that point, since it took my strangely specific character descriptions and put them into the adventure.

Using AI for adventures is something I probably won't be doing, but I also understand that I'm not the target audience for WotC. And they're only going to be getting more and more advanced as time goes by. That's whether or not I want them to.

 

[Umbran]

.... For me it's going to be work, possibly work I don't want to do, luckily you can hire experts that do it better and faster then me. If you have a grass field you can buy a robot to mow the grass. When I'm no longer living out of boxes, I'm buying a robot vacuum cleaner! I'm also very happy with my dishwasher, while I grew up with cleaning the dishes by hand. There are already robots doing the work we don't want to, some are more common and cheaper then others. My grandmother grew up doing the washing and dying of clothes by hand...

Sure. For menial, physical tasks, by all means use automation. Washing dishes and mowing the lawn are not tasks that require an "expert" to do it.

There are robots that do the burger flipping, but they are expensive, students and unschooled workers tend to be a LOT cheaper then a robot

Yes. Correct. Somehow, we have to pay the full production and support costs for the robot, but we don't have to pay the full support costs for the human.

Discussion of that as the basic problem is beyond the scope of these boards.

 

[Stalker0]

It boils down to this. I respect that a lot of people are greatly concerned about AI, for good reasons. But that battle is not going to be won or lost on the battleline of Dnd.

If AI is going to fail, its either in business or the courts. Either AI just turns out to not be monetizable enough for its cost on its own (which is unlikely) or becomes so because the courts push back and require X regulation and Y pullback on data, etc (more likely). And if that happens so be it.

But until that time, normal businesses have every incentive to utilize AI. It is an extremely powerful tool that has the potential to offer enormous value to customers. It would be absolutely FOOLISH not to include AI into dnd in the current climate. For those who think AI has no value in dnd....all I can tell you is....you are wrong. Those of us who have used it, we have found that value. There are those of us that like to craft dungeons from scratch, and there are those that like to use pre bought modules. Likewise, there will be those that want to generate every NPC themselves, and others that would rather AI do it. Being in the first camp should not blind to the potential for those in the second...I myself have always done custom campaigns and adventures but I fully see the value in pregen adventures for people and see why WOTC has monetized it. This is no different.

 

[Umbran]

For those who think AI has no value in dnd....all I can tell you is....you are wrong.

I don't think anyone is arguing it is of "no value".

They are usually arguing that using it is typically inappropriate for ethical and social reasons.

 

[Incenjucar]

While there are paths to AI competing meaningfully with creativity, somewhat requiring creatives to first turn on their own, the general direction is toward banal mediocrity. There is not so much money in TTRPGs that increasing the junk to gems ratio even more toward junk is going to lead to commercial success. Paper is getting expensive and people are going to give up on a game where 98% of the material is mediocre.

That all said, it could be useful for helping to update and convert older-edition works to the newer math, but this is only going to save a small chunk of time.

 

[Stalker0]

They are usually arguing that using it is typically inappropriate for ethical and social reasons.

Which brings me back to my first point in the quoted post.

Social reasons....that changes every generation and with new technology, and AI is no exception. For ethical....not sure about ethical but legally we will see as the courts catch up. I think the biggest fundamental legal question is....does an AI have to pay people for the data it is trained on?

and of course this will lead into a steady series of new legal questions. If I create an AI agent based on my work products and sell it...and the AI does something wrong, how liable am I? Things like that.

 

[Umbran]

Social reasons....that changes every generation and with new technology, and AI is no exception.

"It changes every generation... so we can dismiss it," is also known as "passing the buck". We talk about it in this generation so that the problem has some solutions in place for the next generation to work with.

For ethical....not sure about ethical

Your not being sure is similarly not an argument that it can or should be dismissed or overlooked.

 

[Incenjucar]

In the tech spaces there has been a pattern of hyper-specialization as advances in technology increasingly allow people to function more like replacable cogs in a machine, with the side effect of making them extremely limited in actual capabilities and causing them to struggle with big pictures and change.

GenAI is trying to move art in a similar direction, as with everyone's favorite "design by committee" approach, and this historically leads to a drop in quality and a push to lower expectations as artists are less and less relevant to the process. CEOs and "prompt engineers" are not sources of innovation. RPGs already have enough to struggle with as it is.

 

[Stalker0]

Your not being sure is similarly not an argument that it can or should be dismissed or overlooked.

more that it gets subsumed in the greater legal argument.

The problem with the ethical argument is...when it comes to technologies that generate "power" you have to get all sides to play ball. If you want to ban AI on ethical reasons fine...but if you don't get the US, Europe, Russia, China, India, etc etc everyone to agree not to push AI research and utilize AI than it doesn't matter, because these technologies are too powerful not to use if a competitor country is going to use them.

You can legislate them to make it as fair as possible and try to ensure a public good as best as you can, but putting it back in the box due to ethics is not a reasonable expectation.