Larian swears off gen AI concept art tools and says 'There is not going to be any GenAI art in Divinity,' but it's still 'trying [AI] things out across departments'

Divinity reveal cinematic — (Image credit: Larian)

Larian landed in hot water last month when—in a chat with Bloomberg—bossman Swen Vincke mentioned that the Baldur's Gate 3 and Divinity studio had using generative AI at the studio and that devs "often use AI tools to explore ideas, flesh out PowerPoint presentations, develop concept art and write placeholder text."

That set the cat among the pigeons. There was an immediate and intense reaction as fans wondered what this meant for the studio's future games. Would Divinity be stuffed with AI slop? Would it be built with gen AI trained on artwork of dubious provenance? Eventually, Larian promised a Reddit Q&A session to give players a bit of transparency into the studio, its processes, and how it's using AI.

Or how it's not using AI, I guess. As was prophesied, Larian kicked off its Q&A—with Vincke and a load of other studio honchos—earlier today. One key takeaway? Larian's swearing off using gen AI tools in concept art development.

"First off—there is not going to be any gen AI art in Divinity," wrote Vincke. "I know there’s been a lot of discussion about us using AI tools as part of concept art exploration. We already said this doesn’t mean the actual concept art is generated by AI but we understand it created confusion.

"So, to ensure there is no room for doubt, we’ve decided to refrain from using gen AI tools during concept art development."

A fantasy guy raises a tankard of beer. — (Image credit: Larian)

So, hooray, right? Death Star blown up, the rebels are victorious, truth and justice prevail once again. Well, kind of. Vincke might be vetoing AI in concept art, but the gen AI genie isn't going back in its bottle entirely. "We continuously try to improve the speed with which we can try things out. The more iterations we can do, the better in general the gameplay is. We think gen AI can help with this and so we’re trying things out across departments."

What things is Larian trying out specifically? Vincke doesn't say, and I have to admit that sort of vagueness means I'm still a little concerned. One thing we can be sure of: it doesn't mean gen AI assets will never work their way into Larian videogames to come.

"We will not generate 'creative assets' that end up in a game without being 100% sure about the origins of the training data and the consent of those who created the data," Vincke wrote. "If we use a GenAI model to create in-game assets, then it’ll be trained on data we own." Better than a model trained on stolen artwork, I suppose, but it still makes me nervous.

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One of Josh's first memories is of playing Quake 2 on the family computer when he was much too young to be doing that, and he's been irreparably game-brained ever since. His writing has been featured in Vice, Fanbyte, and the Financial Times. He'll play pretty much anything, and has written far too much on everything from visual novels to Assassin's Creed. His most profound loves are for CRPGs, immersive sims, and any game whose ambition outstrips its budget. He thinks you're all far too mean about Deus Ex: Invisible War.

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