[STEAM] Baldur’s Gate, Divinity CEO explains studio’s usage of AI for concept art: ‘We use AI tools to explore references’

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The excitement for Larian Studios next title, the gory and visceral Divinity, was hijacked by some AI-related rage on social media today, because not even the Baldur's Gate 3 studio is immune from it.

Larian Studios CEO Swen Vincke was caught heat online earlier today after a

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was published this afternoon, stating how "Larian has been pushing hard on generative AI, although the CEO says the technology hasn’t led to big gains in efficiency."

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Image via Larian Studios Bloomberg's Jason Schreier noted that "the use of generative AI has led to some pushback at Larian," but Vincke explained that "at this point everyone at the company is more or less OK with the way we’re using it."

"Holy ***** guys we’re not 'pushing hard' for or replacing concept artists with AI," he said in

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several hours after the article went live. "We have a team of 72 artists of which 23 are concept artists and we are hiring more. The art they create is original and I’m very proud of what they do."

Vincke went further, saying how Larian uses generative AI "to explore things" in concept art, like "references, just like we use

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and art books," and "at the very early ideation stages we use it as a rough outline for composition which we replace with original concept art."

It feels like this is quickly becoming the norm in game dev. For example, Call of Duty: ****** Ops 7 caught a lot of flak earlier this year for what many view as

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. At that time, Activision put out a statement, and it sounds similar to this Larian situation.

"Like so many around the world, we use a variety of digital tools, including AI tools, to empower and support our teams to create the best gaming experiences possible for our players," Activision said. "Our creative process continues to be led by the talented individuals in our studios."

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Honestly, it seems like this has become a standard in game development. And I don't think it's going anywhere. The ****** has been let out of its cage and it's here to stay, for better or worse, since there's little to no regulation on it in general.

If GenAI is used to help creatives with mundane tasks rather than replace them, then it's likely going to continue for the foreseeable future. As it advances, however, the latter seems to become a potential issue, and that's what's scariest about all of this technology.

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