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."

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

If I want a picture with certain famous characters with certain poses in entablished places, to write the right "promts" for a picture by AI could be too complicated.

Even if in the future it was more advanced, it would be faster and cheaper to hire a human artist to design the sketch and this adapted by the computer later.

With AI you could create fastly a family for your just created PC, but the player may want to change some details, for example a sister is from other specie because she is adopted, and her best friend has a crush with the brother, and the biological parents of this sister are... SURPRISE AND PLOT TWIST!

Other point is if you use too many times the AI then there isn't the same level of surprise. Somebody has to be added more things or in the end we will be feeling it is the same dog with a different necklace.

 

[Jd Smith1]

I wouldn't look too close at where your shoes, clothing, chocolate and the delicious rare earths that enable all our wonderful tech toys come from...

Child labor didn't go away, we just sent it somewhere we can't see it. And now it's making a comeback.

The children yearn for the mines.

 

[Jd Smith1]

Even if in the future it was more advanced, it would be faster and cheaper to hire a human artist to design the sketch and this adapted by the computer later.

Speaking as someone who has commissioned art for book covers, there is nothing fast or cheap about artists.

Whereas I came up for a custom image as a prop for my last campaign in two tries and in five minutes, using a free online AI.

All six of my players used AIs to generate their PC images for our current campaign.

We are in the biplane days of AI. Sure, they're just spruce, cloth, and wires now, but that will change rapidly.

 

[Jd Smith1]

If I want a picture with certain famous characters with certain poses in entablished places, to write the right "promts" for a picture by AI could be too complicated.

Typed 'Patton, Lincoln, and Caser looking at a map. Took 36 seconds.

 

[Hussar]

I wouldn't look too close at where your shoes, clothing, chocolate and the delicious rare earths that enable all our wonderful tech toys come from...

Child labor didn't go away, we just sent it somewhere we can't see it. And now it's making a comeback.

Do people just not have any sense of scale?

Pre-industrial, you would be expected to work for your living from about age 8 onwards. That's either when you are going to start working full time on a farm, or be apprenticed to some artisan. The entire notion of "childhood" didn't exist until after the industrial revolution. The notion that the majority of humanity would be so fantastically wealthy that we can allow most of our children to do nearly zero labour until they are 18 years old or even later would be utterly unheard of.

Is there still child exploitation going on in the world? Yup. Totally is and it needs to be stamped out. Are we forcing 99% of children to begin working full time after about age 8? No, not really.

 

[Hussar]

/snip double post.

 

[Bunch]

Do people just not have any sense of scale?

Pre-industrial, you would be expected to work for your living from about age 8 onwards. That's either when you are going to start working full time on a farm, or be apprenticed to some artisan. The entire notion of "childhood" didn't exist until after the industrial revolution. The notion that the majority of humanity would be so fantastically wealthy that we can allow most of our children to do nearly zero labour until they are 18 years old or even later would be utterly unheard of.

Is there still child exploitation going on in the world? Yup. Totally is and it needs to be stamped out. Are we forcing 99% of children to begin working full time after about age 8? No, not really.

Literally people had many children because it increased their income not decreased it like now.

 

[Oofta]

Do people just not have any sense of scale?

Pre-industrial, you would be expected to work for your living from about age 8 onwards. That's either when you are going to start working full time on a farm, or be apprenticed to some artisan. The entire notion of "childhood" didn't exist until after the industrial revolution. The notion that the majority of humanity would be so fantastically wealthy that we can allow most of our children to do nearly zero labour until they are 18 years old or even later would be utterly unheard of.

Is there still child exploitation going on in the world? Yup. Totally is and it needs to be stamped out. Are we forcing 99% of children to begin working full time after about age 8? No, not really.

I've had a poster tell me on this forum that the world would be better off if we reverted back the "good old days" before technological advances. We see the ills of modern society because we are familiar and people are largely ignorant of what life was like three centuries ago. Ignorance is bliss.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Do people just not have any sense of scale?

I have a sense of 'the rest of the world exists' and that's where we've quietly tucked away all our 8 year old child labor and called it solved until recently.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

I have a sense of 'the rest of the world exists' and that's where we've quietly tucked away all our 8 year old child labor and called it solved until recently.

I think you need to ask "what were those children doing before they became 'our' child labour?" and it was not, not labouring. That is not to say that we should not call out companies that benefit from child labour and help increase worker protection and environmental standards worldwide. If only because the exploitation of workers abroad creates leverage to exploit workers at home.
It is not a simple nor straight forward issue though and things are much improved over the past practises in this regards.

This is similar to one of the biggest drives of tension with respect to the AI issue. AI will take capital (as in mucho dinero) to deploy and the interests of the holders of that capital does not necessarily align with the rest of the peons labouring at the coalface.