Guy In Charge Of D&D Says AI Is ‘Supercharging Fandom’

The Dungeons & Dragons community is extremely skeptical of generative AI, and publisher Wizards of the Coast has come under fire in the past for using AI art in material for its games. But the CEO in charge of the D&D and Magic: The Gathering maker continues to sound like he’s all in on the technology, recently calling himself “an AI bull” and speculating about how it could be used for D&D subscription services.

Chris Cocks, the head of Hasbro who took over the toy maker back in 2022, told Semafor in a new interview that he’s been using AI tools in his own D&D campaigns that he DMs for staff, like his sales team. One of these apparently included a Scooby-Doo theme complete with mini-figures, sound effects, and an “incredibly elaborate” PowerPoint presentation.

“It was Scooby-Doo and The Haunting of Merkmiss Manor, and they had to go and figure out who the Merkmiss monster was, and unmask a bunch of local townspeople, and then clearly they weren’t the real villains,” he told Semafor. “It was evil Lyle Blackwood who was trying to steal the Blackwood fortune.”

It’s unclear exactly how much of that particular session was made with the help of AI, but Cocks said he believes AI is “supercharging fandom” and will be “a great leveler for user-generated content” in the future. He also sees financial upsides for Hasbro. Possible examples mentioned by Semafor are “subscription services letting other Dungeon Masters enrich their D&D campaigns, or offerings to let parents customize Peppa Pig animations.”

This isn’t the first time Cocks has praised the possibilities for generative AI in the toy and gaming space. “I’m probably more excited, though, about the playful elements of AI,” he said during a Goldman Sachs conference last year. “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.”

In the past, Cocks pointed to having ChatGPT help with scripts and Bing’s image generator create the art. It seems like it’s only a matter of time before Hasbro is trying to sell D&D versions of those features directly to players. “We can leverage all of that to be able to build very interesting and compelling use cases for AI that can bring our characters to life,” he said last fall. “We can build tools that aid in content creation for users or create really interesting gamified scenarios around them.”

That philosophy appears to be on a collision course with the current official stance by Wizards of the Coast’s D&D team, which currently bans the use of AI in generating final products. “For 50 years, D&D has been built on the innovation, ingenuity, and hard work of talented people who sculpt a beautiful, creative game,” the team wrote in a 2023 statement. “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.”