The man in charge of D&D says AI is a “supercharged fandom”

The Dungeons & Dragons community is very skeptical of generative AI, and the publisher wizards have fired in the past as they use AI art in their games. However, the CEO of D&D and Magic: The Gathering Maker continues to sound like he's all involved in technology, calling it “AI Bull” recently, speculating how it could be used for D&D subscription services. 11 minutes with Bardur Gate 3 character Creatorchris Cocks, head of Hasbro, who took over the toy maker in 2022, told Semafor in a new interview that he uses AI tools in his own D&D campaign, which he uses staff DMS like the sales team. One of these included a Scooby-Doo theme with minifigures, sound effects and “incredibly elaborate” PowerPoint presentations. “It was unforgettable to Scooby-Doo and Merksis Manor. “It was the evil Lyle Blackwood who was trying to steal Blackwood's property.” It is unclear exactly how many of that particular sessions were created with the help of AI, but Cocks believes that AI will be a “supercharged fandom” and “a great leveler for user-generated content.” He also sees the financial benefits of Hasbro. A possible example mentioned in Semafor is “enable to provide a subscription service to enrich the D&D campaign, or to allow parents to customize Peppa Pig Animation.” “But I'm probably even more excited about the playful elements of AI,” he told the Goldman Sachs Conference last year. “I play with probably 30 or 40 people regularly. No one doesn't use AI for either campaign development, character development or story ideas. That's a clear signal that they need to embrace it.” It seems like it's only a matter of time before Hasbro tries to sell D&D versions of these features directly to players. “We can leverage everything to help us build very interesting and compelling use cases for AI. “We can build tools that will help us create content for our users, or create very interesting gaming scenarios around our users.” That philosophy appears to be on a collision course with the current official stance by the D&D team at Wizards of the Coast, which currently uses AI to generate final products. “For 50 years, D&D has been built on the innovation, ingenuity and hard work of talented people sculpting beautiful and creative games,” the team wrote in a 2023 statement. “That hasn't changed. Our internal guidelines remain the same with regard to artificial intelligence tools. It is necessary for artists, writers and creatives who contribute to D&D TTRPG to refrain from using AI generation tools to create the final D&D products.