Larian Studios is experimenting with generative AI and fans aren’t too happy. The head of the Baldur’s Gate 3 maker, Swen Vincke, released a new statement to try to explain the studio’s stance in more detail and make clear the controversial tech isn’t being used to cut jobs. “Any [Machine Learning] tool used well is additive to a creative team or individual’s workflow, not a replacement for their skill or craft,” he said.
He was responding to a backlash that arose earlier today from a Bloomberg interview which reported that Larian was moving forward with gen AI despite some internal concerns among staff. Vincke made clear the tech was only being used for things like placeholder text, PowerPoint presentations, and early concept art experiments and that nothing AI-generated would be included in Larian’s upcoming RPG, Divinity.
The reaction on social media was swift. “Don’t mind me, currently living through my personal 9/11,” wrote one fan on Reddit. “Consider my feedback: I loved working at Larian until AI,” wrote an artist who worked on BG3. “reconsider and change your direction, like, yesterday. show your employees some respect. they are world-class & do not need AI assistance to come up with amazing ideas.”
Vincke has since tried to address those concerns in a long statement sent to IGN:
We’ve been continuously increasing our pool of concept artists, writers and story-tellers, are actively putting together writer rooms, casting and recording performances from actors and hiring translators.
Since concept art is being called out explicitly – we have 23 concept artists and have job openings for more. These artists are creating concept art day in day out for ideation and production use.
Everything we do is incremental and aimed at having people spend more time creating.
Any ML tool used well is additive to a creative team or individual’s workflow, not a replacement for their skill or craft.
We are researching and understanding the cutting edge of ML as a toolset for creatives to use and see how it can make their day-to-day lives easier, which will let us make better games.
We are neither releasing a game with any AI components, nor are we looking at trimming down teams to replace them with AI.
While I understand it’s a subject that invokes a lot of emotion, it’s something we are constantly discussing internally through the lens of making everyone’s working day better, not worse.
The studio head reiterates that Larian is hiring more artists, not fewer, and that it’s bulking up its creative resources for its upcoming game, not trying to cut corners with AI. There won’t be AI in Divinity, Vincke has promised, and the aim is to help employees, not force the tech on them as some publishers like EA have reportedly been doing.
But the statement doesn’t necessarily address deeper divisions over generative AI tools, which many have likened to being plagiarism machines, and the skepticism that’s bound to arise from letting it near game development at all. “Early Access and the way they managed their community across all their updates helped humanize that team in ways that only helped Baldur’s Gate 3, weird for the studio to be so willing to throw all that goodwill away,” wrote former Giant Bomb host Jeff Gerstmann.
