Baldur’s Gate 3 Studio Rejects AI for Art and Writing
▼ Summary
– Larian Studios’ CEO clarified that their next game, Divinity, will not contain any generative AI art assets.
– The studio had faced criticism for earlier statements about experimenting with AI tools for concept art and presentations.
– The developers have now decided to refrain from using generative AI tools during the concept art development phase entirely.
– Larian’s writing director confirmed that no AI-generated text will be used for in-game dialogues or journal entries, citing its low quality.
– However, the studio still plans to use generative AI in limited, non-asset roles to refine ideas and speed up the development process.
The team behind the critically acclaimed Baldur’s Gate 3 has made a definitive statement regarding the use of generative artificial intelligence in their creative process. Larian Studios has publicly rejected the use of AI for generating final art and writing in their upcoming project, Divinity. This clarification comes after a period of online debate and criticism sparked by earlier comments from the studio’s leadership about experimenting with such tools.
During a recent Reddit question-and-answer session, CEO Swen Vincke directly addressed concerns. “So first off – there is not going to be any GenAI art in Divinity,” he stated. This marks a shift from previous remarks where he mentioned the team was exploring AI to brainstorm ideas and create placeholder content. The initial comments had drawn sharp criticism from across the gaming community, prompting the need for a clearer position.
Vincke explained the studio’s new stance, emphasizing a desire to avoid any ambiguity. “We’ve decided to refrain from using genAI tools during concept art development,” he wrote. “That way there can be no discussion about the origin of the art.” However, he did note a potential future exception, indicating that if generative AI were ever used for in-game assets, it would only be trained on data wholly owned by Larian Studios.
The studio’s writing director, Adam Smith, provided equally firm assurances regarding narrative content. He confirmed that AI plays no role in crafting the game’s story. “We don’t have any text generation touching our dialogues, journal entries or other writing in Divinity,” Smith wrote. He characterized the team’s limited experiments with text-generation tools as wholly unsuccessful, deeming the output far below the studio’s standards for quality and creativity.
Smith offered a candid assessment of the technology’s current limitations for high-end narrative design. He explained that even the best AI-generated text scored poorly in their evaluations, failing to meet the baseline quality of a human writer’s earliest draft. The extensive revision needed to bring such content up to par made the tool impractical for their development pipeline.
Despite this firm boundary on final creative assets, Vincke reiterated that generative AI still has a place at Larian as a supportive tool. The studio sees potential in using these systems for internal brainstorming and refining early-stage ideas. The goal is to streamline certain preparatory phases of development, aiming for a more efficient process that allows human talent to focus on high-quality execution.
This balanced approach reflects a growing industry conversation about the ethical and practical application of AI. Larian is drawing a clear line to protect the human artistry central to their games’ identity while cautiously exploring auxiliary uses for the technology behind the scenes.
(Source: The Verge)
