D&D General Hasbro CEO Says AI Integration Has Been "A Clear Success"

However "people make the decisions and people own the creative outcomes".
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We've known for some time that Hasbro CEO--and former president of Wizards of the Coast--Chris Cocks is an avid AI supporter and enthusiast. He previously noted that of the 30-40 people he games with regularly, "there's not a single person who doesn't use AI somehow for either campaign development or character development or story ideas." In a 2025 interview he described himself as an "AI bull".

In Hasbro's latest earnings call, Cocks briefly addressed the use of AI within the company. While he mentions Hasbro, Wizards of the Coast and the digital studio teams, he doesn't specifically namecheck Dungeons & Dragons. However, he does tout Hasbro's AI integration as a "clear success", referring primarily to non-creative operations such as finances, supply chains, and general productivity enhancements, and emphasises that "people make the decisions and people own the creative outcomes". He also notes that individual teams choose whether or not to use AI.

So while it is clear that AI is deeply embedded in Hasbro's workflows, it is not clear to what extent that applies to Dungeons & Dragons. WotC has indicated multiple times that it will not use AI artwork, and its freelance contracts explicitly prohibit its use. The company also removed AI-generated artwork in 2023's Bigby's Presents: Glory of the Giants.

Before I close, I want to address AI, and how we're using it at Hasbro. We're taking a human-centric creator-led approach. AI is a tool that helps our teams move faster and focus on higher-value work, but people make the decisions and people own the creative outcomes. Teams also have choice in how they use it, including not to use it at all when it doesn't fit the work or the brand. We're beyond experimentation. We're deploying AI across financial planning, forecasting, order management, supply chain operations, training and everyday productivity. Under enterprise controls and clear guidelines around responsible use and IP protection. Anyone who knows me knows I'm an enthusiastic AI user and that mindset extends across the enterprise. We're partnering with best-in-class platforms, including Google Gemini, OpenAI and 11 labs to embed AI into workflows where it adds real value. The impact is tangible. Over the next year, we anticipate these workflows will free up more than 1 million hours of lower-value work, and we're reinvesting that capacity into innovation, creativity and serving fans. Our portfolio of IP and the creators and talent behind it are the foundation of this strategy. Great IP plus great storytelling is durable as technology evolves, and it positions us to benefit from disruption rather than being displaced by it.

In toys, AI-assisted design, paired with 3D printing has fundamentally improved our process. We've reduced time from concept to physical prototype by roughly 80%, enabling faster iteration and more experimentation with human judgment and human craft determining what ultimately gets selected and turned into a final product. We believe the winners in AI will be companies that combine deep IP, creative talent and disciplined deployment. That's exactly where Hasbro sits. As we enter 2026, we view playing to Win and more importantly, the execution behind it by our Hasbro, Wizards of the Coast and digital studio teams as a clear success.
- Chris Cocks, Hasbro CEO​

Wizards of the Coast's most recent statement on AI said "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."

A small survey of about 500 users right here on EN World in April 2025 indicated that just over 60% of users would not buy D&D products made with AI.
 

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I understand the snark, but afaik a low demand prompt like the ones I ask for typically produce CO2 on the order of microwaving something for a few seconds or...spending several minutes typing on a laptop. For some of my activities I'm particularly slow at, I bet I use less electricity on the AI request than I would doing the alternative and typing for a couple hours!
I used to run my AIs locally on my gaming PC and could basically audibly compare the electricity and cooling needs of generating some text or images to like, a minute of playing a modern PC game. No one complains that video gamers are ruining the environment.
 

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Wasting my time on pedagogy? My job is to both teach and research. To ignore either facet is to do my job poorly. In an industry context this may not be such a big deal - but long term this may cause problems. If you cannot interpret and summarize your own data correctly then you cannot check if an AI has done it well.
That’s the thing, AI is making all of us dumber. Your brain isn’t literally a muscle, but it is very much like a muscle in that it needs regular challenge not just to grow, but to avoid getting weaker. Everyone who doesn’t incessantly use AI can see it in that one guy at the office who uses it for everything - he gets worse at thinking for himself every day. It’s also a major contributing factor to the childhood literacy crisis, which is very rapidly approaching becoming an adulthood literacy crisis.
 
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I understand the snark, but afaik a low demand prompt like the ones I ask for typically produce CO2 on the order of microwaving something for a few seconds or...spending several minutes typing on a laptop. For some of my activities I'm particularly slow at, I bet I use less electricity on the AI request than I would doing the alternative and typing for a couple hours!
Yeah, sorry for that comment. I edited it to delete it right away, but I guess you must have seen it in the brief window it was up. It was ill-conceived and not helpful for the conversation.
 


I used to run my AIs locally on my gaming PC and could basically audibly compare the electricity and cooling needs of generating some text or images to like, a minute of playing a modern PC game. No one complains that video gamers are ruining the environment.
There have been increases in energy costs and substantial investments in energy as a response to AI use. SpaceX's 'pivot to the moon' is being marketed as logical because solar panels hosted in space will be much more productive than earth based ones. Whether or not anything comes of that, I think the energy demands go way beyond video games.
 

I used to run my AIs locally on my gaming PC and could basically audibly compare the electricity and cooling needs of generating some text or images to like, a minute of playing a modern PC game. No one complains that video gamers are ruining the environment.
My comment was emotionally motivated and not helpful, sorry. To address water use and carbon output more seriously, you’re right that individual use of text or image generators is not really a significant factor. As with most things, it’s at the industrial scale that it becomes a serious problem. That said, video gaming is also contributing to the destruction of the environment, 100%.
 

I understand the snark, but afaik a low demand prompt like the ones I ask for typically produce CO2 on the order of microwaving something for a few seconds or...spending several minutes typing on a laptop. For some of my activities I'm particularly slow at, I bet I use less electricity on the AI request than I would doing the alternative and typing for a couple hours!
The carbon footprint for these models is largely down to the way they are trained and maintained, so while an individual front-end query may require a miniscule amount of energy, to even exist in the first place, let alone have the ability to effectively answer that query, is what requires the burning of multitudes of rivers. The direct, immediate impact of your single query might be miniscule, but adding in the average back-end energy usage of the LLM to all front-end query users drastically ramps up the actual environmental impact of your single query substantially. Using the LLM justifies its continued existence which allows any given LLM owner to justify the massive impact of their models on the world, so they are heavily invested in decoupling any back-end energy usage from front-end queries, covertly obfuscating the individual user's culpability and thus their own.
 

My comment was emotionally motivated and not helpful, sorry. To address water use and carbon output more seriously, you’re right that individual use of text or image generators is not really a significant factor. As with most things, it’s at the industrial scale that it becomes a serious problem. That said, video gaming is also contributing to the destruction of the environment, 100%.
As always, but particularly in the case of AI, the issue isn't the tech, the issue is capitalism. Though on the other hand, I don't have a right to bitch and moan about capitalism in a discussion thread on an investor relations call.
 


As always, but particularly in the case of AI, the issue isn't the tech, the issue is capitalism.
I was trying to avoid saying that directly due to the forum rules, but it is true.
Though on the other hand, I don't have a right to bitch and moan about capitalism in a discussion thread on an investor relations call.
Haha, fair point!
 

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