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

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​

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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.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

One of the AI ads during the Super Bowl was pretty much exactly targeting drudge office work. 'AI can finish out that 1000 row spreadsheet in just a few minutes.' 'AI can build that 100 slide power point.' 'AI can create the emails for the layoff notices(*).'
(*)this one wasn't in the ad spot but doesn't take much imagination to picture happening. Have to pay for AI costs somehow.

Waiting for the first product that was play tested solely by AI test bots.

I think the big question with AI doing a lot of that stuff is "Why would I want to read something nobody wrote?" and that very much applies to powerpoints. It's bad enough, criminal even that 100 slide powerpoints exist (anyone who uses more than 10 slides for a non-super-technical presentation should be shot, frankly), it's worse if some mindless machine slapped them together, because likely the vast majority of them have no meaningful information in them, it's just cargo-cult stuff, effectively.

Spreadsheets are a little different because you're not typically using GenAI to er, gen. You're usually using it to just reformat or speed up a process. Which is kind of what it should be doing. Really the problem with GenAI is the Gen, not the AI.

 

[Sacrosanct]

No one I know uses AI in their campaigns. I know my friends tend to be anti-AI, so maybe that's skewed, but I have a hard time believing so many people out there are using AI in their games.

It's just more corpo speak to embrace everything AI. My own company is pushing hard for it. Just had a 4 hour training session last week about how we are being mandated to use AI to create epics, features, stories, and for it to prioritize that work. Basically, I'm being asked to enthusiastically embrace a tool that will replace my job. As I told my Business Analyst, I'm just hoping AI keeps sucking long enough for me to hit retirement.

 

[Misanthrope Prime]

I think the big question with AI doing a lot of that stuff is "Why would I want to read something nobody wrote?" and that very much applies to powerpoints. It's bad enough, criminal even that 100 slide powerpoints exist (anyone who uses more than 10 slides for a non-super-technical presentation should be shot, frankly), it's worse if some mindless machine slapped them together, because likely the vast majority of them have no meaningful information in them, it's just cargo-cult stuff, effectively.

Spreadsheets are a little different because you're not typically using GenAI to er, gen. You're usually using it to just reformat or speed up a process. Which is kind of what it should be doing. Really the problem with GenAI is the Gen, not the AI.

The obvious answer is "the thing written has information that you need."

The use case for GenAI isn't "write me Lord of the Rings", the use case is "take all the statistical information from my scientific experiment and present it concisely in natural language understandable to a layman". Then, of course, as a human, you check your work, but that just saved you hours of labor or saved the money that you or your institution might have had to pay to a technical writer.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

I think the big question with AI doing a lot of that stuff is "Why would I want to read something nobody wrote?" and that very much applies to powerpoints. It's bad enough, criminal even that 100 slide powerpoints exist (anyone who uses more than 10 slides for a non-super-technical presentation should be shot, frankly), it's worse if some mindless machine slapped them together, because likely the vast majority of them have no meaningful information in them, it's just cargo-cult stuff, effectively.

Spreadsheets are a little different because you're not typically using GenAI to er, gen. You're usually using it to just reformat or speed up a process. Which is kind of what it should be doing. Really the problem with GenAI is the Gen, not the AI.

It really is the Gen, more it is the general effort to get us all to pay a subscription for a poorer less capable more opaque search tools, with some added summarisation capability. With a significant chance that the summary has no bearing on the actual thing being summarised.

 

[zakael19]

No one I know uses AI in their campaigns. I know my friends tend to be anti-AI, so maybe that's skewed, but I have a hard time believing so many people out there are using AI in their games.

I know a lot of people who do charart and such these days. Most of it quite bad still.

There's been quite a few studies coming out showing that, as you'd expect, having the AI summarize and present things to you or note take etc results in lower retention and understanding. If you want to retain broad brush events and themes some after-session quick notes are worth it; and if you want to use a LLM to add stuff that's great for creating a database.

I dropped 50 sessions of excellent notes from my player in NotebookLLM and it does a solid job of wrapping together like "all the times this NPC shows up" or "how did all that stuff with those people go" into the hallmark LLM bulleted list with Actionable Headers.

 

[Charlaquin]

I think the big question with AI doing a lot of that stuff is "Why would I want to read something nobody wrote?" and that very much applies to powerpoints. It's bad enough, criminal even that 100 slide powerpoints exist (anyone who uses more than 10 slides for a non-super-technical presentation should be shot, frankly), it's worse if some mindless machine slapped them together, because likely the vast majority of them have no meaningful information in them, it's just cargo-cult stuff, effectively.

Spreadsheets are a little different because you're not typically using GenAI to er, gen. You're usually using it to just reformat or speed up a process. Which is kind of what it should be doing. Really the problem with GenAI is the Gen, not the AI.

The one guy at my workplace who’s weirdly pro-AI (there’s always one, in there?) made a PowerPoint for a session during our team’s annual professional development summit last year… In his defense it was closer to 10 slides than 100, but every one of them had obviously AI generated art, and I was like, “well, this session is a waste of my time, because I can’t trust a single word of this presentation knowing that any of it could have been written by Doctor Plagiarism the Always-Wrong Robot.” I didn’t say it, but I know I wasn’t the only one thinking it.

 

[Gradine]

 

[Koloth]

I think the big question with AI doing a lot of that stuff is "Why would I want to read something nobody wrote?" and that very much applies to powerpoints. It's bad enough, criminal even that 100 slide powerpoints exist (anyone who uses more than 10 slides for a non-super-technical presentation should be shot, frankly), it's worse if some mindless machine slapped them together, because likely the vast majority of them have no meaningful information in them, it's just cargo-cult stuff, effectively.

Spreadsheets are a little different because you're not typically using GenAI to er, gen. You're usually using it to just reformat or speed up a process. Which is kind of what it should be doing. Really the problem with GenAI is the Gen, not the AI.

AI slop generated so the next person can use it as input for an AI generated report.

Agree on the power point thing. Sat thought way too many meetings with way too many slides. Hated that most of my continuing education college classes ~15 years ago were the prof reading power point slides in the classroom.

Anyone have the betting pool on the first bankruptcy due to the C-Suite basing a critical decision on an AI generated report?

 

[Gradine]

The one guy at my workplace who’s weirdly pro-AI (there’s always one, in there?) made a PowerPoint for a session during our team’s annual professional development summit last year… In his defense it was closer to 10 slides than 100, but every one of them had obviously AI generated art, and I was like, “well, this session is a waste of my time, because I can’t trust a single word of this presentation knowing that any of it could have been written by Doctor Plagiarism the Always-Wrong Robot.” I didn’t say it, but I know I wasn’t the only one thinking it.

The "one guy at my workplace who's weirdly pro-AI" is very sadly my boss (the Dean of our Library, no less!) It is endlessly aggravating

 

[Charlaquin]

The obvious answer is "the thing written has information that you need."

The use case for GenAI isn't "write me Lord of the Rings", the use case is "take all the statistical information from my scientific experiment and present it concisely in natural language understandable to a layman". Then, of course, as a human, you check your work, but that just saved you hours of labor or saved the money that you or your institution might have had to pay to a technical writer.

Did it, though? The work you’d have to do reading the summary, finding the parts it got wrong, and re-writing them probably isn’t significantly less than the time it would have taken you to just write the summary yourself, and for whatever time it may have saved it will be a lower quality product.