News broke this morning that Larian Studios, developer of Baldur’s Gate 3 and the upcoming, just-announced Divinity, is apparently using generative AI behind the scenes for things like concept art and placeholder text. The response from the gaming community was swift and raucous, and now Larian founder and game director Swen Vincke is responding to clarification of his comments, confirming that Larian “will not release a game with any AI components or is thinking about scaling back teams to replace them with AI” and that AI is “something we continually discuss internally with the goal of making every workday better, not worse.”
Vincke assures that there will be no AI-generated content in the final version of Divinity. “Everything is human actors; we write everything ourselves.” However, it seems this approach doesn’t work smoothly for everyone. In his article, Bloomberg admits that some internally at Larian have rejected the proposal, although Vincke says, “I think at this point everyone in the company is more or less okay with the way we’re using it.”
However, this news was not very well received by the community. There’s Larian on Bluesky being criticized by many people in the game development community, including several former Larian employees. “Consider my opinion: I loved working at @larianstudios.com until AI came along.” writes Selena Tobinenvironmental artist and former Larian employees. “rethink and change your direction like yesterday. show your employees some respect. they are world class and don’t need the help of artificial intelligence to come up with amazing ideas.”
The Divinity and Baldur’s Gate 3 communities have had slightly more divided reactions, with some defending its utilize for concept creation, though there is still significant opposition. Several commentators have noted that games like The Alters have suffered significant fan anger over the discovery of the generative utilize of AI, but are willing to forgive Larian for the same offense.
In response to this reaction, Vincke issued a lengthy follow-up response to IGN, which we have published in full here:
We are constantly expanding our group of concept artists, writers and storytellers, actively connecting set design rooms, conducting castings and recording actors’ performances, and employing translators.
Since concept art is clearly referenced – we have 23 concept artists and have job offers for more. These artists create concept art every day for conceptual and production purposes.
Everything we do is incremental and designed to get people to spend more time creating.
Any machine learning tool used well is an addition to a imaginative team’s or individual’s workflow, not a replacement for their skills or craft.
We explore and understand cutting-edge machine learning as a toolkit that developers can utilize and see how it can make their everyday lives easier, allowing us to make better games.
We are not releasing a game with any AI components, nor do we intend to limit teams to replace them with AI.
While I understand this is an emotive topic, it is something we continually discuss internally with an eye toward making each work day better, not worse.
Vincke then retweeted the post on Twitter/X:
Fuck guys, we’re not “insisting” or replacing concept artists with artificial intelligence.
We have a team of 72 artists, 23 of which are concept artists. We are hiring more. The art they create is original and I am very proud of what they do.
I was asked directly about the concept art…
— Swen Vincke @where? (@LarAtLarian) December 16, 2025
The post reads:
Fuck guys, we’re not “insisting” or replacing concept artists with artificial intelligence.
We have a team of 72 artists, 23 of which are concept artists. We are hiring more. The art they create is original and I am very proud of what they do.
I was asked directly about the concept art and our utilize of Gen AI. I replied that we utilize it to discover things. I didn’t say we utilize it for concept art. Artists do that. And they are indeed world-class artists.
We utilize AI tools to find references, just like we utilize Google and art books. In the very early stages of ideation, we utilize it as a abrasive outline of the composition, which we replace with original concept art. There is no comparison.
If you want to learn more about how we utilize ML, I talked about it here:
https://gamespot.com/articles/baldurs-gate-3-dev-embraces-machine-learning-for-tasks-that-nobody-chants-to-do/1100-6531123/We hired makers for their talent, not their ability to do what the machine suggests, but they can experiment with these tools to make their lives easier.
This discussion takes place in the context of a series of interviews with Vinck following the announcement of Larian’s next game, Divinity, at The Game Awards. We conducted our own interview with Vincke, which you can read in full here, and elsewhere Vincke confirmed that Divinity will, in fact, be a turn-based RPG. We are slowly gathering here everything we know about the Divine so far.
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Have a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.
