Hasbro is building a business to license AI-generated versions of its iconic characters, CEO Chris Cocks said in remarks to Semafor. The company launched its Sixth Wall AI studio in June to explore and monetize Hasbro’s 166-year catalog of intellectual property using artificial intelligence.
Cocks said Hasbro is negotiating with a major cellphone carrier about replacing customer-support hold music with a Trivial Pursuit quiz show voiced by an AI-generated LeVar Burton. He described Hasbro’s role as acting like “talent agents and creative directors” for what the characters do, while other platforms would handle expressing those ideas to users.
Cocks compared the proliferation of AI tools to the early internet, when rights holders found themselves on the losing side of cultural battles over user-generated content. “Rather than trying to fight the dispersion of a really powerful and innovative new technology, we’re choosing to embrace it,” he said, adding that the approach creates revenue opportunities for Hasbro, its partners, and the voice talent and creatives associated with the characters.
The company emphasized that guardrails will be important. Cocks said Mr. Potato Head’s voice will be based on recordings from the estate of the Toy Story actor and insult comic Don Rickles, but that the character “won’t express certain things that Mr. Potato Head shouldn’t be offering an opinion on.”
As an example of internal interest in character options, one employee mentioned wanting a Megatron voice option for Alexa-like assistants; Cocks noted that the Transformers character already serves as an AI-powered, and sometimes judgmental, deejay at Hasbro’s Rhode Island headquarters.
Hasbro presents this strategy as a controlled way to participate in the AI-driven reuse of IP: the company will license characters and oversee creative direction while negotiating specific terms, partners, and technical implementations on a case-by-case basis.
Authors: Liz Hoffman and Rohan Goswami
