Wizards of the Coast has unintentionally revealed its plans to integrate advanced AI technology into its gaming properties, potentially including Magic: The Gathering and Dungeons & Dragons.
In a new job posting listed on the Hasbro website, WotC says it is looking for a Principal AI Engineer to “explore new uses of AI for all levels of game development”.
Responsibilities of the new role will include designing, building, and deploying systems for intelligent generation of text, dialog, audio, art assets, NPC behaviors, and real-time bot frameworks.
This isn’t the first time WotC and Hasbro have shared their intent to use AI to expand product capabilities and potentially save on development costs. Chris Cocks, CEO of Hasbro, made a statement to investors earlier this year on the potential benefit of AI integration for the company:
“This is cutting-edge technology, and Hasbro is a 100-year-old company…when you talk about the richness of the lore and the depth of the brands–D&D has 50 years of content that we can mine. Literally thousands of adventures that we’ve created, probably tens of millions of words we own and can leverage. Magic: The Gathering has been around for 35 years, more than 15,000 cards we can use in something like that,” Cocks said. “We can leverage all of that to be able to build very interesting and compelling use cases for AI that can bring our characters to life. We can build tools that aid in content creation for users or create really interesting gamified scenarios around them.”
Chris Cocks, CEO of Hasbro
The integration of AI into Dungeons & Dragons and Magic: The Gathering remains unclear. At the beginning of the year, Magic: The Gathering expressed caution towards AI by announcing limits on its internal use.
We already made clear that we require artists, writers, and creatives contributing to the Magic TCG to refrain from using AI generative tools to create final Magic products.
wizards of the coast
This announcement came after a backlash when MTG players harshly criticized MTG for using AI in marketing materials for new products.
Exactly what Magic: The Gathering’s current stance on AI is now uncertain, as the job posting entails using AI for generating “art assets” and “text dialog”; whereas MTG previously stated they will refrain from using AI tools to create “final Magic products”.
It may be the case that WotC will use these AI tools for games other than MTG & DnD; however, the official job posting on the company website only mentions these two properties by name when describing the games under management by WotC to potential job applicants.
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