After a series of AI scandals, the CEO of Hasbro has revealed he’s “excited” about using the technology in “Dungeons & Dragons.”
Hasbro CEO is excited about not having to pay humans for their work anymore. Fify
Yes please, kill d&d so the creative people currently working on it move to others IPs you don’t control 🙏
“I’m probably more excited though about the playful elements of AI,” he said. “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. That’s a clear signal that we need to be embracing it.”
So as a DM and Player, yes, there are uses for AI. Generating a good character portrait as opposed to scouring search engines is the obvious one. But I also had good useage with putting my loose outline in to AI story generators, while it only produced garbage cliches that I didn’t use. It was a good way to brainstorm and see different angles of my original idea.
Having said all that, I super duper don’t want AI to become a core part of DND/MTG, art in products should be ACTUAL art by ACTUAL artists. Not my 8 fingered free placeholder nonsense. I truly struggle to think of a good way that hasbro could be using AI that would help the game.
Naive hopeful me: maybe they will use it in the way it’s described. For gathering ideas, developing concepts. Hopefully a character generation tool. Where it leads you through step by step and keeps track of all things. Probably not gonna happen. Probably they use it to write the damn rule books with them including art.
Define “actual” in this instance, please. How unassisted are we going to mandate, in order to attain this genuine art? Simply decree non-digital across the board (ie. ban photoshop, etc.)? Or, do these hypothetical makers of certified art need to concoct their own pigments and carve their own tools, too? 🤷🏼♂️
I mean, fuck Hasbro & WotC & this asshat CEO too, but c’mon people. Think.
but c’mon people. Think.
You need to take your own advice and think on the context of arts commercial useage and the truth that every human exists because of past human accomplishments.
In terms of human perspective with digital tools AI’s difference of scale is a difference of kind. Photoshop fundamentally didn’t change the process and concept of producing images. It’s still a human sitting down with tools and producing art based off their ideas and rendered with their skill.
But AI removes that human process, now a string of keywords will mash up existing art to make a facsimile of something unique. AI doesn’t make anything new, it fundamentally can’t, therefore not really art. All of human culture is standing on the shoulders of historical giants, you and I can have this conversation because of someone else inventing computers, which exist because of someone utilizing electricity, which was only possible by the wheel, only possible by fire etc.
However I don’t think there is much to gain in criticism of an artist buying their paints from a store just as there isn’t any in artists using a mouse. Their perspective, skill and talent will produce something new, inspired by others undoubtedly, but not copy pasting brushstrokes. I hope we agree that’s plagerisn and intrinsically not unique.
This is all philosophy of existentialism, what IS art and when does it become something else? The artistsy of the writers, painters and editors is what produces a compelling end multi generational international product like DND. Which is different than an end user using AI to spice up a character sheet inside the privacy of their own home.
AI is a wonderful tool, but only if the end use doesn’t really matter. My players and I don’t care about 11 fingered elves, but I’d be pissed to see that in a book I paid $50+ for. Just as I would be upset to read flavor text that recruisve of past writing or game mechanics designed by a machine incapable of actually running a session. If you are charging for a product, human artistry should be involved, anything else is free so who cares. Removing the human factor is the rubicon that changes digital art to high concept machine assisted plagerism.
AI can allow non artist to output art that’s somewhere between terrible and mediocre.
AI can allow a great artist to dramatically increase their output and therefore revenue.
AI can’t really help mediocre artists much.
Luddites going to luddite basically. This exact same fear occurs everytime there’s a dramatic technology leap. Luddites like yourself will eventually quiet themselves.
Only art where you gather natural pigments with human hands, mix them yourself on a surface you made yourself out of fibers you gathered yourself shall be acceptable. Everything else isn’t actual art and is costing millions their jobs.
You know what’s funny? Professional artists probably use AI more than anyone. If not, they’re dumb. Why wouldn’t you use a tool that can 10x your output?
Great time to get into, oh, any RPG that isn’t connected to WOTC.
Ton of options available, including many designed to offer similar experiences to various editions of D&D if that’s your jam.
Sounds like a great reason to not buy any of the DnD 2024 shit then. My players and I are perfectly happy with 5e
DnD Beyond is laying all the ground work for full enshitification as they do a soft push away from 5e to whatever the fuck live service subscription and micro transaction model they’ll be pursuing.
Yep, they’re trying to create their own virtual tabletop, which will fit perfectly with that.
At some point start introducing power creep so players want to purchase access to new classes and feats.
