The Gathering or Dungeons & Dragons

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

In an interview with Nilay Patel for The Verge’s 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’s workflow. Cocks explained how, like the rest of the world, Hasbro was surprised by the overnight success of KPop Demon Hunters when it was released in June 2025. There weren’t many toys or other merch available in time for the holiday season because Netflix hadn’t licensed the IP out. Cocks said that within two weeks, Hasbro was able to pitch full-featured products to Netflix — but only because of AI tools.

“Two years ago, that would’ve been impossible,” Cocks said. “But 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.” 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.

“So we have Peppa Pig co-design Peppa Pig products with us,” he said. “Optimus Prime co-designs Optimus Prime Transformers products with us.” Apparently, Optimus Prime and Megatron are two of the DJs in the main hall of the Hasbro office building in Pawtucket, RI. “Optimus 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,” Cocks said. (It’s unclear if those two will also make the move to Boston’s Seaport area when Hasbro relocates later this year.)

Cocks did refer to the AI-driven creative process as “a bit of garbage in, garbage out” where among a thousand ideas, only one might be “magical.” He highlighted the fact that it’s humans who inspire the good ideas and follow through on them.

When asked about his personal AI usage, Cocks admitted that he uses it frequently. “I don’t 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,” he said. “There is so much AI-based animation, images, text, sound effects, and voice cloning on my PC, it would floor you.”

When pressed about AI experimentation at Hasbro — something Cocks has talked openly but vaguely about during earnings calls — 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. “There are some brands that the audience, the creators, just don’t want it,” he said, “so we don’t even have it in our pipelines for our video games or for Magic: The Gathering, or D&D.”

Particularly when it comes to recent Universes Beyond Magic sets, like Avatar: The Last Airbender 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’ word for it, however, neither Magic nor D&D have ever used AI. And he intends to keep it that way.