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.

 

[TiQuinn]

Yeah, and Google once said “Don’t Be Evil”.

 

[mearls]

AI, by its nature, is a subscription-based model. With how the tech works right now, you can't offer it up as anything other than a subscription. Combine that with the staff cut backs they think it enables and it's every c suite executive's dream.

The root challenge is that we play these games because we like the challenge of being creative. It's like building an escalator on the side of Mount Everest. This isn't toiling away on a vapid PowerPoint or trudging through a TPS report.

It's actually fun, but I'm not sure they get that. We don't play TTRPGs despite the creative demands. We play them because of them.

 

[Cordwainer Fish]

Well, I'm thinking of a word and 'bull' is certainly a part of it...

 

[The Firebird]

AI is a great tool to help creativity, though. I used to have tables of random generators I'd turn to, but generative AI has to some extent replaced those.

The fruitful part comes in the collision of the random generation with my own creativity, and that's still true. A wholly AI generated module or setting would be a bore.

 

[Sorcerers Apprentice]

AI, by its nature, is a subscription-based model. With how the tech works right now, you can't offer it up as anything other than a subscription.

You can run AI models for free on your own computer, as long as you have decent hardware.

 

[Gorgon Zee]

AI, by its nature, is a subscription-based model. With how the tech works right now, you can't offer it up as anything other than a subscription. Combine that with the staff cut backs they think it enables and it's every c suite executive's dream.

Just a technical note here: you can run relatively decent AI models on a desktop machine right now. Slower than a dedicated service, but very doable. With a fine-tuned model, a 7 billion parameter open source model can do just as well as a closed source subscription model.

Your phone cannot handle that at the moment, and only high end laptops currently can. A $1600 mac mini pro definitely can. Apart from the compute needs there’s nothing special about Gen AI that requires a subscription model.

Your main point stands though. GenAI can do many tedious jobs well, which is where I personally think it has promise (for example, it’s pretty good at scrubbing personal information from text corpuses to help preserve privacy and boy is that a terrible job to do by hand) but it also can do a mediocre job at generating content. And, sadly, for many people, cheap mediocre content is good enough.

What we need to fight against is not, in my opinion, simply the use of AI to generate creative content, but the belief that cheap mediocre content can replace more expensive quality content.

 

[jgsugden]

AI, by its nature, is a subscription-based model. With how the tech works right now, you can't offer it up as anything other than a subscription. Combine that with the staff cut backs they think it enables and it's every c suite executive's dream.

The root challenge is that we play these games because we like the challenge of being creative. It's like building an escalator on the side of Mount Everest. This isn't toiling away on a vapid PowerPoint or trudging through a TPS report.

It's actually fun, but I'm not sure they get that. We don't play TTRPGs despite the creative demands. We play them because of them.

I agree that AI begins as a subscription model - and currently makes sense as subscription.

However, as AI and related technologies displace an ever expanding percentage of workforce, the trend will point towards a smaller and smaller percentage of people being able to pay a subscription fee.

 

[Alzrius]

I'm reminded of the beginning of Douglas Adams' novel Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, where he talks about how—after inventing answering machines to talk on the phone for us, and VCRs to watch TV for us—we (humans) invented electric monks to believe things for us.

Now we've reached the next step: having AI to play games for us.

 

[Retreater]

I like Level Up. One of my players was telling her college-aged daughter about it, and she asked to look through my books while her mom was making her character at our Session Zero last week. The daughter was excited and said "everything I was thinking about changing in 5E has already been changed here."

This is to say that there are good options for 5E-like games that are made by real people in case Hasbro crosses one of your lines.