Last August, D&D owner Wizards of the Coast came under scrutiny after accidentally including AI imagery in a then-upcoming book, “Bigby Presents: The Glory of Giants.” The backlash was so great that the company theoretically pledged to never use generative AI in its source books or materials.
In January, the official Magic: The Gathering account (also owned by WoTC) posted AI-generated art and claimed it wasn't AI art, then admitted that it was AI art and that posting it was a mistake. Later, in an interview with VentureBeat during the 27th annual Dice Awards, Chris Cocks, CEO of Hasbro (which owns WoTC), said that the company “can't be too flippant about AI,” but that it's still “exciting.”
Cox added, “Dungeons & Dragons has 50 years of content that we can mine. There are literally thousands of adventures that we've created, and probably tens of millions of words that we own and can utilize. Magic: The Gathering has been around for 35 years, and there are over 15,000 cards that can be used in those games.”
Currently, Wizards of the Coast has a job posting for a “Principal AI Engineer” on their website.
“WOTC is moving forward with their AI project again,” writes a former D&D creator. A spicy encounter On Twitter, to add: “We're fixing their game, broadening its horizons, and becoming popular. But Wizards is either willing or unable to stop people from replacing us with bots.”
“This is really frustrating,” he wrote. Nara WooIndie Art Director and Illustrator in the TTRPG World: “I've been a WotC advocate [I don’t know] How many times [because] The company's art directors have assured me to my face that this would never happen… I feel seriously insulted.”
But speaking with Comic Book Gaming's Christian Hoffer, Wizards of the Coast has some comforting words if you look closely: “Our stance on AI has not changed. This job description pertains to a role in future video game projects,” the company said, providing Hoffer with a link to its AI FAQ page on AI-generated art, which reads, “Artists, writers, and creators contributing to the Magic TCG and D&D TTRPG should refrain from using AI-generated tools to create final Magic or D&D products.”
So the official line that the company is currently taking is that it's okay because it's a video game, and video games don't count. This is like a cheat day on a diet.
According to WoTC, the “Lead AI Engineer” will need to “design, build, and deploy systems for intelligently generating text dialogue, audio, art assets, NPC behavior, and a real-time bot framework,” after which they're looking for “knowledge of major advances in AI, including LMM, 2D and 3D content creation, and audio generation.”
It's important to note that these responsibilities can be interpreted in a few different ways. It definitely involves generative AI that's different from AI more commonly used in video games, but developing systems for NPC behavior or real-time bot frameworks, for example, requires experience creating those. There's a mix of expectations and discipline. But honestly, what annoys me more than the job listing itself is how cringey WoTC and Hasbro's obvious “hmm” approach is.
AI is going to be used in video games. It may not be in the way that the big tech idea masterminds would like you to believe (for example, I don't think we need NEO NPCs), but the secret is out, and there are applications where AI can reasonably be used for tedious chores, just as developers have been using procedural generation for years.
But WoTC seems to want to have it both ways. Hasbro wants to make D&D a multimedia megastar franchise after the success of Baldur's Gate 3. But the use of AI art in TTRPGs is even more unpopular than in video games. Generally, there's good reason for that. Compared to the arcane scope of AAA games, for example, sourcebooks don't need as much art. There's no real exhausting, pointless drudgery that you can point to and say, “Look, this tech makes sense.”
But WoTC also wants to make a video game. Really Bad. So, naturally, there's a lot of interest in how AI can reduce those costs. The challenge is that the Venn diagram of D&D players and video game enthusiasts overlap so much that conversations about ethical AI use are impossible to avoid, and a total PR disaster.
For now, I feel like I'm playing a game of “Here come the planes!” trying to get people to eat their food, except the person holding the spoon keeps saying “Don't worry, we stopped putting planes in the spoon. I mean, we're interested in planes. We're hiring a plane manager. But our position on planes hasn't changed.” It's enough to make you lose your appetite. Anyway, considering how terrible Google's AI search is, you can bet we can expect a lot more fiascos from WoTC in the coming years.
