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Executives spend so much time these days worrying about the businesses AI might destroy that we can overlook the new businesses it will create. Here’s one from Hasbro: Mr. Potato Head, voiced by the late Don Rickles, answering your customer-service calls. The toy and game giant is building a business to license AI versions of its iconic characters, CEO Chris Cocks said on Semafor’s Compound Interest. Hasbro launched its Sixth Wall AI studio in June to mine its 166-year history of IP. Cocks said the company is negotiating with a major cellphone carrier to have a Trivial Pursuit quiz show, voiced by an AI-generated LeVar Burton, replace customer-support hold music. “We’ll serve as the kind of talent agents and creative directors for what the characters do,” Cocks said. “Then it’s up to another platform to express it.” (Liz wants a Megatron option for Alexa; Cocks noted the “Transformers” character is already serving as the AI-powered, and occasionally judgmental, deejay at Hasbro’s Rhode Island headquarters.) Cocks compared the proliferation of AI tools to the early days of the internet, when IP rightsholders found themselves on the losing end of a cultural battle 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. “It’s an opportunity for us to make a bit of money, our partners to make a bit of money, and then the voice talent and creatives behind these characters that people love to also be able to participate economically.” Guardrails, Cocks is quick to point out, are key: Mr. Potato Head, whose voice will be based on recordings from the Toy Story actor and insult comic’s estate, “won’t express certain things that Mr. Potato Head shouldn’t be offering an opinion on.”
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