Currently
Hidden Door — co-founder and CEO. We build games out of existing stories: fans play inside their favorite books, movies, and TV shows, in partnership with the authors, studios, and rights holders who created those worlds.
Past projects
Fast Forward Labs — founded 2014. An applied machine learning research company. Acquired by Cloudera in 2017, where I served as VP of Research and later General Manager of Machine Learning.
hackNY — co-founded 2010. A nonprofit that places student engineers at New York City startups.
DataGotham — co-hosted starting 2012. A conference for New York’s homegrown data community, with Drew Conway, Mike Dewar, and John Myles White.
Book
Data Driven: Creating a Data Culture — with DJ Patil (O’Reilly, 2014). A short, practical book on what it takes for an organization to actually use its data well.
Press
2026
- NeoWork — “Why This AI Founder Refuses to Use OpenAI” (Jul 2026)
- dev/ai/nyc — “AI, Creativity & the Future of the Web” (Apr 2026)
- The Aboard Podcast — “Product First, Then AI” (Apr 2026)
- GDC Festival of Gaming — “The State of AI-Native Games: Lessons from the Frontier” (Mar 2026)
2025
- AI Gamechangers — “‘The machine is not itself creative. The creativity comes from our authors'” (Oct 2025)
- GamesBeat — “Hidden Door has Halloween games for adults who love fan fiction” (Oct 2025)
- Game Developer — “Devs are more worried than ever that generative AI will lower the quality of games” (Sep 2025)
- Publishers Weekly — “Hidden Door Rolls Out Literary Roleplaying Platform” (Aug 2025)
- PocketGamer — “Hidden Door launches social role-playing platform for co-creative storytelling” (Aug 2025)
- Forbes — “Hidden Door Turns Fan Worlds Into Licensed, Revenue-Sharing Story Platforms” (Aug 2025)
- Variety — “‘Pride and Prejudice’ and Vampires: New AI-Driven Role-Playing Platform Launches” (Aug 2025)
- The Verge — “Hidden Door is an AI storytelling game that actually makes sense” (Aug 2025)
- GamesBeat — “Hidden Door launches social role-playing platform with AI” (Aug 2025)
2024
- CRAFTED. — “AI, Creativity, and Soul: How Hilary Mason Chooses Her Own Adventure” (Oct 2024)
- MIT Technology Review — “How generative AI could reinvent what it means to play” (Jun 2024)
- Game Informer — “Brain Drain: A.I. And Indies” (May 2024)
- CNET — “Generative AI Is Coming for Video Games” (May 2024)
- DLD Conference — “Looking behind the ‘Hidden Door’: AI, Gaming and Storytelling” (Jan 2024)
2023
- Generative Now — “Hilary Mason: Deterministic vs Probabilistic, and How AI is Changing Storytelling” (Nov 2023)
- VentureBeat — “Hidden Door unveils new art style for its AI-based narrative game” (Nov 2023)
- GamesIndustry.biz — “Taking a peek behind Hidden Door’s AI” (Aug 2023)
- Engadget — “How do you prevent an AI-generated game from losing the plot?” (Jun 2023)
- VentureBeat — “Hidden Door launches playtests for Wizard of Oz games created by generative AI” (Jun 2023)
- PC Gamer — “Creator of AI game Hidden Door: ‘I don’t think AI is innately evil'” (Jun 2023)
- VentureBeat — “Exploring the potential of generative AI in games” (May 2023)
- CNET — “AI Is Reimagining the Way We Play Role-Playing Games” (May 2023)
- IEEE Spectrum — “AI Can’t Take Over Everyone’s Jobs Soon (If Ever)” (May 2023)
- PC Gamer — “I saw the first major ‘AI game’ coming to PC” (Apr 2023)
2021–2022
- TechCrunch — “Hidden Door wants to turn fiction into immersive roleplaying experiences” (Oct 2022)
- Business Wire — “Hidden Door Launches AI Game Platform to Build the Narrative Multiverse” (Mar 2022)
- VentureBeat — “Hidden Door reveals its AI-powered narrative game platform” (Mar 2022)
- WIRED — “Hilary Mason Explains Machine Learning in 5 Levels of Difficulty” (Aug 2021)
Earlier career (2011–2016)
- Fortune — “40 Under 40: Ones to Watch — Hilary Mason” (2011)
- Scientific American — “Getting to Know You: Bit.ly Chief Scientist Finds Rich Data in Shortened Links” (2011)
- Glamour — “Women in Tech: We Really Do Need More!” (2011)
- Scientific American — “Physics or Fashion? What Science Lovers Link to Most” (2011)
- Forbes — “bitly’s Hilary Mason on ‘What is a Data Scientist?'” (2012)
- Fast Company — “100 Most Creative People in Business 2013: Hilary Mason, Leslie Bradshaw” (2013)
- Network World — “Data scientist Hilary Mason wants to show you the (near) future” (2016)
- Simple Talk (Red Gate) — “Geek of the Week: Hilary Mason” (2016)
Full Hidden Door press kit: hiddendoor.co/press
Hi. I'm Hilary Mason. 