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.

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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."

 

[tetrasodium]

Soon enough, AI will be replacing accountants, computer coders, managers, executives, and CEOs.

In that day, the equivalent human counterparts will understand better the angst of the artists today.

Psst... Automation consumer targeted applications and things like SAAS have long been nipping at the heels of many in those and other roles while doing their best to keep their skills one step ahead of the curve. The "angst of artists" that you are trying to get people to better understand often gets the cold shoulder with very good reason. That specific reason is the fact that the only thing that changed is that "artists" lacking skill sets like advertising/pr/etc work that adds value to their work had to stop saying "oh my job is safe so nothing to worry about for me, I'm an artist and ai could never do what I do. The plight of those people will never hit me. Maybe they should upskill and get in on the knowledge economy"

 

[Yaarel]

Personally, I am waiting for a computer to function genuinely as a personal assistant (according to my own parameters and equivalent to a human). That kind of functionality is probably within a few years.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Personally, I am waiting for a computer to function genuinely as a personal assistant (according to my own parameters and equivalent to a human). That kind of functionality is probably within a few years.

I did a test of Google Gemini at work and with a routine task I wanted it to do -- "assemble the publicly available contact information for these 20 high ranking people in one place for me" -- it told me to Google it. At the moment, the only thing I find it useful for is summarizing long rambling emails. But the stuff I really want it to do it's either unable to do or prohibited from doing at the moment.

But I expect that to change in the relatively near future.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Here's a short level 1 adventure created by the latest iteration of ChatGPT, with some minor prompts:

Now generate some art, some page layouts, and get in contact with a printing service, because you have there what someone interested in "bending the cost curve" for D&D would want.

Feels like burning down a haystack to find a needle to me.

 

[Hussar]

Now generate some art, some page layouts, and get in contact with a printing service, because you have there what someone interested in "bending the cost curve" for D&D would want.

Feels like burning down a haystack to find a needle to me.

But here’s the thing. Why is that bad? If an ethically created AI can produce something more efficiently than using a human to do it, why shouldn’t we?

We replaced many factory jobs to automation and that’s generally held to be a good thing. What’s special about being a writer?

And I say this as someone who’s been racing technology for my entire career. I will very likely be among the last to work ESL on the scale that it is. Why spend billions of dollars per year of public money for foreign esl teachers like me if an AI driven teaching program can do it just as well? Never minding that ai translation services will mean a huge reduction in the need for learning different languages.

ESL in many countries is going to collapse soonish. My job will go from a lifelong career to the equivalent of a piano teacher.

What’s so special about being a module writer that it should be protected?

 

[Vaalingrade]

But here’s the thing. Why is that bad? If an ethically created AI can produce something more efficiently than using a human to do it, why shouldn’t we?

Can we start at the part where the Gen AI companies have insisted they can't do their 'important work' via ethical sourcing alone as they believe ethical data sources are too shallow?

After that we can travel by the part where they'll never be able to do what they promised with the LLM design, which can't reproduce, expand on, or tweak its output.

And finally we'll arrive in power consumption town where they're not going to be efficient unless the tec bros are right and someone somewhere perfects cold fusion in the next five years.

All without sparing any empathy for the human costs because who cares how many humans get hurt when... something about automation and horse buggies that ignores the real cost THOSE are still extracting from us.

 

[I'm A Banana]

But here’s the thing. Why is that bad? If an ethically created AI can produce something more efficiently than using a human to do it, why shouldn’t we?

We gotta be real specific about what we're calling bad, because depending on the exact target, we could be talking past each other real fast.

I think it would be bad if WotC used ChatGPT to write adventures (even if they used some editors/writers to "clean it up."). Sounded like you agreed with that upthread, so I think you have some idea of why that would be a bad thing.

We replaced many factory jobs to automation and that’s generally held to be a good thing. What’s special about being a writer?

"Generally held to be a good thing" by who? Not by the kids that lost limbs in the gear works, I think. Not by the victims of the Triangle Shirtwaist fire. Listen to some critical voices and you'll see a galaxy of what might charitably be called compromises (and what might cynically be called inevitable effects of treating people like tools rather than like people).

Writing also isn't an exception. There was opposition to the factory job, and factory jobs literally gave us child labor and gilded age billionaires and The Jungle. The technology of the trans-Atlantic slave trade was opposed by the people who experienced the human cost. The Luddites opposed weaving technology. People opposed agriculture. History keeps trying to teach us the lesson of valuing human beings as human beings and not as tools and we keep not listening.

And I say this as someone who’s been racing technology for my entire career. I will very likely be among the last to work ESL on the scale that it is. Why spend billions of dollars per year of public money for foreign esl teachers like me if an AI driven teaching program can do it just as well? Never minding that ai translation services will mean a huge reduction in the need for learning different languages.

ESL in many countries is going to collapse soonish. My job will go from a lifelong career to the equivalent of a piano teacher.

We might spend the money in part because we collectively believe the relationship between the teacher and the student is important. Like, some of the things I learn from my French teacher is how different people think, different cultural customs, different ways of organizing language and thought. An AI that teaches me "Merci beaucoup!" is not a comparable experience.

What’s so special about being a module writer that it should be protected?

It's not special. It's just the specific instance of the general thing that is most relevant to this conversation.

The general thing is thinking of humans in terms of their specific utility to you, instead of as full human beings who are inherently valuable and important by virtue of being people saddled with the same world the rest of us live in.

The specific instance is: Chris Cocks maybe replacing some employees with AI.

 

[tetrasodium]

"Generally held to be a good thing" by who? Not by the kids that lost limbs in the gear works, I think. Not by the victims of the Triangle Shirtwaist fire. Listen to some critical voices and you'll see a galaxy of what might charitably be called compromises (and what might cynically be called inevitable effects of treating people like tools rather than like people).

Writing also isn't an exception. There was opposition to the factory job, and factory jobs literally gave us child labor and gilded age billionaires and The Jungle. The technology of the trans-Atlantic slave trade was opposed by the people who experienced the human cost. The Luddites opposed weaving technology. People opposed agriculture. History keeps trying to teach us the lesson of valuing human beings as human beings and not as tools and we keep not listening.




We might spend the money in part because we collectively believe the relationship between the teacher and the student is important. Like, some of the things I learn from my French teacher is how different people think, different cultural customs, different ways of organizing language and thought. An AI that teaches me "Merci beaucoup!" is not a comparable experience.


It's not special. It's just the specific instance of the general thing that is most relevant to this conversation.

The general thing is thinking of humans in terms of their specific utility to you, instead of as full human beings who are inherently valuable and important by virtue of being people saddled with the same world the rest of us live in.

The specific instance is: Chris Cocks maybe replacing some employees with AI.

I think that you might be off by one or more centuries wrt factory jobs that were "automated" away. You seem to be talking about a much earlier period of mechanization and industrialization rather than what is generally considered automation.

 

[Dire Bare]

But here’s the thing. Why is that bad? If an ethically created AI can produce something more efficiently than using a human to do it, why shouldn’t we?

We replaced many factory jobs to automation and that’s generally held to be a good thing. What’s special about being a writer?

And I say this as someone who’s been racing technology for my entire career. I will very likely be among the last to work ESL on the scale that it is. Why spend billions of dollars per year of public money for foreign esl teachers like me if an AI driven teaching program can do it just as well? Never minding that ai translation services will mean a huge reduction in the need for learning different languages.

ESL in many countries is going to collapse soonish. My job will go from a lifelong career to the equivalent of a piano teacher.

What’s so special about being a module writer that it should be protected?

What shouldn't be done by AI, no matter how good AI becomes?

Journalism. Art. Communication between people and organizations. Teaching.

Journalism is already infested by AI-written articles that have really taken the industry even further into the toilet.

I don't want any of the art that I consume to have the same happen. Don't use AI to generate visual art, written art, collaborative art, or any art whatsoever.

These things can be assisted by AI, but not completely generated by AI, removing the human component.

Thanks.

(updated)

 

[I'm A Banana]

I think that you might be off by one or more centuries wrt factory jobs that were "automated" away. You seem to be talking about a much earlier period of mechanization and industrialization rather than what is generally considered automation.

I mean, we can get very specific about what specific models were undermined by what specific labor disputes, but losing sight of the forest for the trees is part of how we keep making this mistake, so lets at least try not to repeat it in this conversation. The forest is: this isn't new or special. This is part of what we go through in every technological change.