Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks Talks AI Usage in D&D [UPDATED!]

Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks is convinced that the Dungeons & Dragons franchise will support some kind of AI usage in the future. Speaking today at a Goldman Sachs event, Cocks spoke about how AI products could soon support Dungeons & Dragons and other Hasbro brands. Asked about whether AI has the potential to "bend the cost curve" in terms of entertainment development or digital gaming, and how it's being used in the toy and content industries, Cocks said the following:

"Inside of development, we've already been using AI. It's mostly machine-learning-based AI or proprietary AI as opposed to a ChatGPT approach. We will deploy it significantly and liberally internally as both a knowledge worker aid and as a development aid. I'm probably more excited though about the playful elements of AI. If you look at a typical D&D player....I play with probably 30 or 40 people regularly. There's not a single person who doesn't use AI somehow for either campaign development or character development or story ideas. That's a clear signal that we need to be embracing it. We need to do it carefully, we need to do it responsibly, we need to make sure we pay creators for their work, and we need to make sure we're clear when something is AI-generated. But the themes around using AI to enable user-generated content, using AI to streamline new player introduction, using AI for emergent storytelling, I think you're going to see that not just our hardcore brands like D&D but also multiple of our brands."

Wizards of the Coast representatives has repeatedly said that Dungeons & Dragons is a game made by people for people, as multiple AI controversies has surrounded the brand and its parent company. Wizards updated its freelance contracts to explicitly prohibit use of AI and has pulled down AI-generated artwork that was submitted for Bigby's Presents: Glory of the Giants in 2023 after they learned it was made using AI tools.

A FAQ related to AI specifically notes that "Hasbro has a vast portfolio of 1900+ brands of which Magic: The Gathering and Dungeons & Dragons are two – two very important, cherished brands. Each brand is going to approach its products differently. What is in the best interest of Trivial Pursuit is likely quite different than that of Magic: The Gathering or Dungeons & Dragons." This statement acknowledges that Hasbro may use AI for other brands, while also stating that Wizards is trying to keep AI-generated artwork away from the game. However, while Wizards seems to want to keep AI away from D&D and Magic, their parent company's CEO seems to think that AI and D&D aren't naturally opposed.

---

UPDATE -- Greg Tito, who was WotC's communications director until recently, commented on BlueSky: "I'm deeply mistrustful of AI and don't want people using it anywhere near my D&D campaigns."

 

[TiQuinn]

Who cares?

The relevant definition of "regularly" is that of Chris Cocks. It's his own gaming experience he's describing after all. Who cares how YOU define regularly?

Sheesh.

It matters if one is going to take Cocks’ statement at face value.

 

[tetrasodium]

In fairness, that's not entirely an impossible thing.

Myself, while I only play directly with about 12 people (three groups with some overlap), if I expand the fences to include affiliated games I'm not in and-or currently-inactive players I could get to 25-30 real fast.

Which means if CC is involved in some WotC-internal playtest groups that are surrounded by a larger interconnected community of other similar groups that all exchange information and war stories, plus his home game if he has one, 30-40 isn't at all out of line.

If you "expand the fence" to include people who you don't actually play with in a count of people who you play with, you still are not playing with them.

If you change "play d&d" to being "involved in some WotC-internal playtest groups"you once again are not playing d&d because you are play testing something and have set an expectation of testing protocols mandating x y &z in ways that renders the initial claim about them using AI the equivalent of useless data point like"we have a 40 person playtesting department for XYZ and it mandates they use AI in some aspects of their character".

Sure, and I've addressed multiple groups and Adventurer's League.

Depends upon what is meant by "regularly."

30-40 people regularly gathering together to play with Cocks doesn't sound like the usual D&D experience.

Given his role as CEO(?) it coincidentally it reminds me of offhand literal references to upper management types with a hobby like playing in a couple d&d groups where all of the players are paid to attend that I've seen in more than one dystopian/cyberpunk type works of fiction.

 

[Argyle King]

I gamed with that many people over the course of a few months. I would consider that "regularly".

This is a weird thing to be fixated on. At one point I regularly played with a lot of people. Exactly how often I would say qualifies as regularly versus how often it would have to be for you is irrelevant.

I posit that it is relevant for the reasons I've stated elsewhere.

However, I'll concede that your have a better ability to empathize with the experience of playing with Cocks than I do.

 

[Oofta]

I posit that it is relevant for the reasons I've stated elsewhere.

However, I'll concede that your have a better ability to empathize with the experience of playing with Cocks than I do.

If by "empathize with" you mean "had similar experience", fine.

Whether or not all of them use AI or how he would even know is a whole other question. Do people in my group use AI because I occasionally use it to generate images? Because we have a player that did character portraits for everyone? Or are the people he works with just a different demographic because for example they're all WotC employees? Or is it just corporate spin and a throwaway line he used to impress investors? I don't know the answer to that.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I gotta admit, both my groups have used AI to create tokens, do some writeups, and I've used ChatGPT to do the stat blocks for some one shot monsters. Sure, I had to fiddle around with them a bit after the fact to clean them up, but, it did save me a heck of a lot of time.

Stew Shearer's comment talking about how using AI tools is anathema for the "entire TTRPG experience" smacks a lot of the same tone that people reserve for pooh poohing DM's using modules.

Like I said, having something like Dungeon Alchemist is pretty darn handy. It's a tool. No different than any other tool I use. I haven't rolled a saving throw for a character in like ten years - Fantasy Grounds handles that. Is that anathema to the TTRPG experience?

I wonder why you want to do that instead of paying human beings for art, writeups, and statblocks. Time? Money? Convenience? Not concerned about the energy usage or copyright issues that are inherent to AI? Fun to try out a new tech toy? A little from all the above?

Honestly curious!

But, this is also a bit of a left leg in the pants. It's not really the meat, here. Chris Cocks isn't talking about using AI to do stat blocks for your home games.

He's talking about doing it instead of paying a professional D&D designer to write that stat block, and then to put it in a D&D book. "Bending the cost curve."

Like, if it came out that The Book of Many Things was written using AI assistance (even though none of the art was AI-generated)....is that a concern? Or should WotC be free to cut corners using ChatGPT just like you do in your home games? And as these tools get better, what if they wrote 50% of a book with AI? 75%? 98%? Enough to replace a writing staff entirely with an editor or two?

For folks who have concerns about AI usage in general (from copyright issues in how they build their training to the demands on data centers to using it to replace a professional), I think that's a concern. IDK if it's a line in the sand in the same way for folks who don't give a toot about all that and want to use AI regardless. Is there value in the human labor required to make your D&D content, or not? I imagine the line is different for different folks in different contexts

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

Here in this forum we have seen several examples of art by AI, and some results may be awesome, but they lack the same level of storytelling impact.

Maybe they are useful to create the first "sketches", but I would rather to be reviewed by humans. AI creators are "good craftmen but bad designers". Their creations are more a recombination of previous works by others.

When AI you could create new nPCs if the DM has to improvise because the players have arrived to a new town, but those characters who conquer the hearts by the players, those only can be created by human artists.

 

[Oofta]

Here in this forum we have seen several examples of art by AI, and some results may be awesome, but they lack the same level of storytelling impact.

Maybe they are useful to create the first "sketches", but I would rather to be reviewed by humans. AI creators are "good craftmen but bad designers". Their creations are more a recombination of previous works by others.

When AI you could create new nPCs if the DM has to improvise because the players have arrived to a new town, but those characters who conquer the hearts by the players, those only can be created by human artists.

Individual portraits can look okay, it's scenes with multiple individuals like crowd scenes that rarely work well. It also typically takes multiple iterations to get an image to look right.

Personally I don't want these images generated for a commercial product. For personal use? As long as you don't push the capabilities of the AI engine you're using it can turn out okay.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

I agree, AI is not good for pictures where there are several characters interacting. Really the AI only uses the premade poses.

And photorealistic animation videos are... with two words: "uncally valley". I don't advice it for commercial targets. It is better to "full empty spaces".

* I feel curiosity about an actual-play show about a Ravenloft adventure with a horror+comedy tone where DM and players are AI, and the PCs are kenders. OK, we know they may not survive, but the key is how they died, because fault of bad luck or by wrong and stupid choices.

 

[p_johnston]

I do fine it mildly amazing that a company that makes so much money off of selling creative works would be happy about something that they're hoping can make creative works without the Artist. Because if it gets to that point.....why do i need Hasbro/Wotc?

Because the next logical step after cutting out the artist is cutting out the distributor.

 

[Von Ether]

As a DM, sometimes box text is a blessing, rather than me having to describe a room based on keywords in a narrow space on a page.

In the post I was responding to, the GM was using AI to create "boxed text" to their own homemade adventure. The GM is not reading off bullet points from a pre-made adventure, they are creating an adventure from scratch themselves.

Or it sounds like the GM is less having AI Tools help flesh out an adventure and just having AI generate the whole adventure for them.