If you’ll remember from last month following The Game Awards, developer Larian Studios made headlines after CEO Swen Vincke stated the company was using generative AI in the planning process for its games. Vincke then tried to clarify his statements, which wound up making them worse. Now, in a Reddit AMA conducted this morning, Vincke has stated the new Divinity game will not be utilizing gen AI, but he does believe it will help the studio in the future.
Making things simple, Vincke started the AMA by stating, “So first off – there is not going to be any GenAI art in Divinity. 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 genAI tools during concept art development. That way, there can be no discussion about the origin of the art.”
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While that’s nice to hear, Vincke then states that Larian will not be abandoning the tool entirely in the future. He explains that, as developers, Larian is constantly trying to improve the speed at which it can iterate on concepts. Having more iterations leads to better ideas, he believes. “We think GenAI can help with this and so we’re trying things out across departments,” he says. “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.”
Explaining further, Vincke claims that Larian will not generate “creative assets” that wind up in its games without being 100% sure of the origins of that asset. He stresses that, “If we use a GenAI model to create in-game assets, then it’ll be trained on data we own.”
Further in the AMA, writing director Adam Smith chimed in to state that the new Divinity will not be using gen AI to create any text for dialogue, journal entries, or other various pieces of writing. “We had a limited group experimenting with tools to generate text,” Smith wrote, “but the results hit a 3/10 at best and those tools are for research purposes, not for use in Divinity.”
Check out more content about AI usage
Sega states it will use AI to assist in development, but only in ‘appropriate use cases’
Square Enix is looking to replace 70% of its QA team with generative AI by the end of 2027
Nintendo has stated that no AI-generated artwork was used to develop Mario Kart World
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Written by Peter Glagowski
Peter has been a freelance gaming and film critic for over seven years. His passion for Nintendo is only matched by the size of his collection.
