The role of large language models and image generators in the TTRPG community has been a thorny topic ever since widely-accessible models became increasingly available in the last few years–with fans by and large wanting to keep the adoption of their usage as far away as possible. But even with all the controversy they’ve faced, the owner of the biggest RPG in the world, Dungeons & Dragons, thinks AI is going to come for the Forgotten Realms and beyond sooner rather than later.
“Inside of development, we’ve already been using AI. It’s mostly machine-learning-based AI or proprietary AI as opposed to a ChatGPT approach. We will deploy it significantly and liberally internally as both a knowledge worker aid and as a development aid,” Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks recently told attendees at a Goldman Sachs event (via En World) of Hasbro’s approach to AI more broadly. The company, both at large and more specifically at D&D and Magic: The Gathering publisher Wizards of the Coast, has been on a hiring spree in the last year for positions to help develop AI integration, so far on digital endeavours at the studio like potential video games. But Cocks doesn’t just think a wider embrace of AI is coming at Hasbro and for D&D, but from players themselves, too.
“I’m probably more excited though about the playful elements of AI. If you look at a typical D&D player… 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,” Cocks’ AI comments continued. “That’s a clear signal that we need to be embracing it. We need to do it carefully, we need to do it responsibly, we need to make sure we pay creators for their work, and we need to make sure we’re clear when something is AI-generated. But the themes around using AI to enable user-generated content, using AI to streamline new player introduction, using AI for emergent storytelling, I think you’re going to see that not just our hardcore brands like D&D but also multiple of our brands.”
While Cocks can attest to the players he has personally interacted with, Wizards of the Coast at large, at least so far, has been keen to emphasize that Dungeons & Dragons is a game about human creativity, made by actual people for actual people to play. Last year the company updated its policies for both Dungeons & Dragons and Magic: The Gathering to explicitly prohibit the use of generative AI tools in any part of the creative process for official work on either game. The move was surrounded by a series of embarrassing controversies for Wizards relating to generative AI.
In summer of 2023, the D&D Fifth Edition sourcebook Glory of the Giants saw several internal illustrations from regular D&D artist Ilya Shkipin replaced in updated versions of the book after he admitted to using generative AI programs to help illustrate them. Earlier this year, just weeks after Wizards had updated its guidelines against the use of AI, a promotion for the then-upcoming Magic set Ravnica Remastered was accused of using AI imagery. Wizards originally defended the art as being created by humans, only to apologise and admit that AI-generated elements were indeed used in the image days later.
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