Larian Studios CEO Swen Vincke, as well as creative directors, recently participated in an AMA on Reddit to set expectations for the studio’s upcoming Divinity game, particularly about its stance on generative AI–a hot-button topic in the industry right now. Responding to a fan question about the role of generative AI in game development, Vincke was rather blunt: “There is not going to be any GenAI art in Divinity.”
His comments arrive amid wider debate over how and whether AI should be used in creative processes, especially as some high-profile games have faced backlash for such use. One notable example is Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, the acclaimed RPG that had two Indie Game Awards (including Game of the Year and Debut Game) rescinded when it was revealed the title had included AI-generated assets during development, violating strict no-AI rules–even though those assets were patched out later.
In the AMA, Vincke acknowledged that previous discussions about experimenting with AI tools for concept-art had been confusing. To make its intentions clear, the studio has elected to avoid generative AI entirely in concept-art creation for Divinity. As Vincke put it, there should be no doubt about where the art came from.
“We’ve decided to refrain from using genAI tools during concept-art development. That way, there can be no discussion about the origin of the art,” Vinke replied. “Having said that, 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 GenAI can help with this, and so we’re trying things out across departments. Our hope is that it can aid us to refine ideas faster, leading to a more focused development cycle, less waste, and ultimately, a higher-quality game.”
Vinke did note that the creative assets will not be generated from outside. If an AI model is used to create something, it will be trained on data or art that Larian itself owns.
Fans weren’t done there, though: A follow-up question asked whether the no-AI stance applied only to concept-art, or if it extended to other creative areas such as writing. They also pointed out previous mentions of using AI for placeholder text and wondered whether such use could undesirably influence final content. Larian’s writing director, Adam Smith, responded: “The stance applies to writing as well. We don’t have any text generation touching our dialogues, journal entries, or other writing in Divinity.”
Smith went further in explaining that using AI to generate placeholder text offered no real benefit after working with a model. “We had a limited group experimenting with tools to generate text, but the results hit a 3/10 at best, and those tools are for research purposes, not for use in Divinity. Even my worst first drafts–and there are a lot of them–are at least a 4/10 (although Swen might disagree), and the amount of iteration required to get even individual lines to the quality we want is enormous.”
Earlier last year, in an interview with GameSpot, Vincke claimed that the studio was using machine-learning tools to automate “tasks nobody wants to do,” doubling down on using it only for quickening the workflow. There is no release date yet for Divinity, and Larian is feeling the pressure on how to follow up on the massive success of Baldur’s Gate 3.
