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.

 

[zakael19]

Follow-up: I made the image below for a recent game, using AI. The players had been building an airship for a number of sessions, and they finally got it launched and took off into the skies above Nicodranas. In preparation, I built and painted the Dungeons and Lasers airship. Then I took a photo of it and asked ChatGPT to give me a background to capture the moment of them flying out over the Lucidian Ocean. So: the background is all AI but from my prompt, set in a world designed by Matt Mercer, the model painting was all me, and the model was designed by Archon Studios, though modified a bit by me. Who's the primary author here?


View attachment 429958

According to the US Copyright folks, your contribution is copyrightable (but it's a painted mini, so maybe not...) under the human creation guidelines; the AI portion not. If you provided an underlying coastline sketch & some notional buildings, those would be copyrightable as well.

Art is in the eye of the beholder.

 

[Moving Pictures]

I’ll be the first to admit I’m not a great DM, but if someone sent me this out of the blue:

"Create a low-level NPC that the party might meet, one who has no connections to any established lore or plot, but is merely interesting."

I’d have questions…
1) what genre is this for? What kind of characters are appropriate (person from a town, hermit in the woods, scientist from a big city), where will the players meet this character….
2) what does low level mean in this context. Are talking about meta game actually low “levels” or do we mean low level like peasant vs king or street thug?
3) if low-level means mechanics instead of setting what system are you using.
4) do you need a backstory, stat block, both?

Valid.
SO let's see what happens with a "better" prompt..

Please create an NPC that may be found in a large port city; low-level (1-3) but interesting, designed for a D&D 2e setting with characters about fourth-or fifth level. The world has few magic-users, but acknowledges clerics from the major religions.

I'd cut and paste, but lemme tell you - it's better, but still garbage. Got the THAC0 right, but AC was 5e and the "thief" abilities were all wrong; three freaking pages of incoherent background. Again, I can do better off the top of my head.

 

[Moving Pictures]

I think "slop" might have different meanings to different people. Or different connotations. Or different impacts.

Art used to be limited by the people that could create it- that made it special. It was a finite thing. Now AI can create essentially unlimited art (I guess it's finite/limited by our ability to produce electricity to run it).

Humans create art. Machines assemble synthesized stuff stolen from humans.

There is no such thing as "AI art."

 

[Distracted DM]

Humans create art. Machines assemble synthesized stuff stolen from humans.

There is no such thing as "AI art."

I'd very much like to agree, but unfortunately it's easy to come up with reasons that it is art... we're seeing discussions like these all over. I see the primary reason to not designate something AI-created as art is to preserve what art means... what I was talking about re: art being special and finite. I think the arguments of "art is something made by humans" is an argument that's too easily contested. I guess I'd just rather pick a different hill to die on ... and at this rate I feel like we're going to be dying on any of those hills. There's a lot of rejection of AI content by the public now but it feels like something that's going to be rejected less and less as time goes on and it becomes harder to tell the difference.

I guess we can hope that the rejection stays strong enough for long enough that companies need to start charging a lot more for the service, rather than running on and subsidizing it with seed funding etc, and AI costs become only worthwhile for select things (rather than trying to inject it into everything).