{"id":528936,"date":"2026-03-11T11:04:12","date_gmt":"2026-03-11T11:04:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/528936\/"},"modified":"2026-03-11T11:04:12","modified_gmt":"2026-03-11T11:04:12","slug":"the-gathering-or-dungeons-dragons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/528936\/","title":{"rendered":"The Gathering or Dungeons & Dragons"},"content":{"rendered":"

Despite the fact that Hasbro<\/a> sometimes programs AI models of characters like Peppa Pig and Optimus Prime<\/a> to help design toys and other products, CEO Chris Cocks promised that AI tools will never be used for Dungeons & Dragons<\/a> and Magic: The Gathering<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In an interview<\/a> with Nilay Patel for The Verge\u2019s Decoder podcast, Cocks talked about his tenure as CEO since taking over in February 2022 and touched heavily on the rise of AI as part of the company\u2019s workflow. Cocks explained how, like the rest of the world, Hasbro was surprised by the overnight success of KPop Demon Hunters<\/a> when it was released in June 2025. There weren\u2019t many toys or other merch available in time for the holiday season because Netflix hadn\u2019t licensed the IP out. Cocks said that within two weeks, Hasbro was able to pitch full-featured products to Netflix \u2014 but only because of AI tools.<\/p>\n

\u201cTwo years ago, that would\u2019ve been impossible,\u201d Cocks said. \u201cBut now, with the advent of AI-enabled design tools, we can go in and do what used to take us two or three months in basically two or three weeks, sometimes, two or three days.\u201d Hasbro designers have trained a number of AI models with in-house IP. Cocks went on to explain that sometimes designers will even program a specific character as a model to be a co-designer that vets the authenticity of ideas.<\/p>\n

\"Some
\n Official art from\u00a0Aurore Folny that will be used for D&D reference cards slated for release later in 2026.Image: Wizards of the Coast<\/p>\n

\u201cSo we have Peppa Pig co-design Peppa Pig products with us,\u201d he said. \u201cOptimus Prime co-designs Optimus Prime Transformers products with us.\u201d Apparently, Optimus Prime and Megatron are two of the DJs in the main hall of the Hasbro office building in Pawtucket, RI. \u201cOptimus is always very serious and tells you the soulful reason about the song, and Megatron basically makes fun of you for not picking thrash rock,\u201d Cocks said. (It\u2019s unclear if those two will also make the move to Boston\u2019s Seaport area when Hasbro relocates<\/a> later this year.)<\/p>\n

Cocks did refer to the AI-driven creative process as \u201ca bit of garbage in, garbage out\u201d where among a thousand ideas, only one might be \u201cmagical.\u201d He highlighted the fact that it\u2019s humans who inspire the good ideas and follow through on them.<\/p>\n

When asked about his personal AI usage, Cocks admitted that he uses it frequently. \u201cI don\u2019t do that for our products, but I do that all the time for just personal passion projects, and I DM… Dungeons and Dragons is kind of my jam, and I DM probably three or four groups,\u201d he said. \u201cThere is so much AI-based animation, images, text, sound effects, and voice cloning on my PC, it would floor you.\u201d<\/p>\n

When pressed about AI experimentation at Hasbro \u2014 something Cocks has talked openly but vaguely about during earnings calls \u2014 he explained that all Hasbro design teams have access to a suite of AI tools, but that workflow remains far removed from Wizards of the Coast. \u201cThere are some brands that the audience, the creators, just don\u2019t want it,\u201d he said, \u201cso we don\u2019t even have it in our pipelines for our video games or for Magic: The Gathering, or D&D.\u201d<\/p>\n

Particularly when it comes to recent Universes Beyond Magic sets, like Avatar: The Last Airbender<\/a> and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, a number of players have lamented the art quality and speculated that AI is to blame. If we take Chris Cocks\u2019 word for it, however, neither Magic nor D&D have ever used AI. And he intends to keep it that way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Despite the fact that Hasbro sometimes programs AI models of characters like Peppa Pig and Optimus Prime to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":528937,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[62,276,277,49,48,61],"class_list":{"0":"post-528936","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-ca","12":"tag-canada","13":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/528936","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=528936"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/528936\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/528937"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=528936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=528936"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=528936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}