D&D's Wizards of the Coast come under fire for AI (again) after advertising for a 'principal AI engineer', but insists 'our stance on AI hasn't changed' since videogames don't count
Back in August of last year, D&D's owners Wizards of the Coast came under harsh scrutiny for accidentally working in AI imagery into its (at-the-time) upcoming book Bigby Presents: The Glory of Giants—a backlash so dramatic it saw the company swear off using generative AI for its source books and materials. In theory.
Back in January, the official Magic: The Gathering account (a property also owned by WoTC) posted AI-generated art, insisted it wasn't AI art, then admitted it was indeed AI art and that its inclusion was a mistake. Then, in an interview with VentureBeat during the 27th annual Dice Awards, Hasbro (who owns WoTC) CEO Chris Cocks said that, while the company couldn't «be very cavalier in how we think about AI», that it was nonetheless «exciting»:
Cocks added: «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.»
Now Wizards of the Coast has a «principal AI engineer» job listing on its website.
«WOTC is once again moving forward with their AI Plans,» writes now-formerly D&D creator SpicyEncounters on Twitter, adding: «We fix their game, expand its horizons, & make it popular. And yet Wizards is either willing to abide by or unable to stop those who would replace us with… bots.»
«This is so damn frustrating,» writes a Nala Wu, an indie art director and illustrator in the TTRPG space: «I’ve defended WotC [I don't know] HOW MANY TIMES [because] I was made promises to my face by the art directors at this company that this would never happen … MAN does this feel like a slap in the face.»
Speaking to ComicBook Gaming's Christian Hoffer, however, Wizards of the Coast has some words of comfort to offer, kinda, if you squint at them right. «Our stance on AI hasn't changed … This job description is for a role for future video game projects,» the
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