Chris Cocks, chief executive of Hasbro, finds himself in an unusual position: he is enthusiastically embracing artificial intelligence for his own creative projects, yet unwilling to impose the same tools on the company's most valuable franchises because players have made their opposition unmistakably clear.
Speaking recently to The Verge's Nilay Patel, Cocks revealed he uses AI "all the time for just personal passion projects" and that as someone who runs three or four D&D groups, "there is so much AI-based animation, images, text, sound effects, and voice cloning on my PC, it would floor you." For a CEO who has previously championed the technology as a productivity driver, this is straightforward enthusiasm.
Yet when discussing how Hasbro will actually deploy AI in its commercial products, Cocks struck a notably different tone. "From a creative context, I think you have to think about it very carefully," he told The Verge. "There are some brands that the audience, the creators, just don't want it, so we don't even have it in our pipelines for our video games or for Magic: The Gathering, or D&D. For things like toys where we're basing it on existing IP, or like a long legacy of ideas, we are able to use it and use it pretty effectively."
This represents a meaningful reversal from Cocks' previous rhetoric. In 2024, he told a Goldman Sachs conference audience that among the "30 or 40 people" he played D&D with regularly, "not a single person doesn't use AI somehow for either campaign development or character development or story ideas," calling this "a clear signal that we need to be embracing it." His current position acknowledges that industry enthusiasm does not translate to player acceptance.
The shift reflects hard lessons learned through public controversy. Wizards of the Coast, Hasbro's gaming subsidiary, banned its artists from using generative AI tools in their creative process in August 2023, after a fan backlash over AI altered imagery in D&D sourcebook Bigby Presents: Glory of the Giants. A similar uproar over AI use in a Magic ad a few months later resulted in an official apology.
There is a genuine tension here worth acknowledging. On one side sits legitimate concern about the impact on professional artists and the economics of creative labour. Many players feel a fierce sense of loyalty to human artists that goes beyond simple consumer preference. In the D&D space, artists are not faceless service providers; they are party members, community leaders, and friends. The backlash against AI isn't an abstract economic theory for most game masters; it is a defence of people they actually know and interact with on social media.
On the other side sits the reality that the tabletop RPG industry has drawn a hard line against AI, but players are quietly embracing it anyway. The official policy exists in tension with the stated views of Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks, who told Semafor in March 2025 that he personally uses AI to generate storylines, artwork, and even character voices for his own D&D games. Cocks noted that among the 30 to 40 people he plays with regularly, not a single one doesn't use AI somehow for campaign or character development. Personal adoption does not automatically translate to corporate acceptance of the same tools in published products.
Cocks' current position appears pragmatic: recognise where player sentiment has crystallised against a technology, respect that boundary, and pursue AI integration elsewhere in the business where resistance is lower. Whether this represents genuine conviction or corporate damage control remains an open question. The problem does cut to the heart of what players really love about tabletop games. For most players, imagination and creativity are half the fun of D&D. Hasbro's leadership, it seems, has begun to understand this even if they do not fully agree.