Following significant backlash, Baldur's Gate 3 director Swen Vincke's stance on the use of AI for Larian's next game, Divinity, has been outlined further.
Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier shared the full transcript of his discussion with Vincke about AI after his article claimed "Larian has been pushing hard on generative AI." During that interview, Vincke confirmed that generative AI was being used for Divinity's "white-boxing", a term used to describe early parts of the development process during which devs attempt to get a feel for the game without using finalized assets.
Vincke says that concept artists and scripters can use AI if they choose. For artists, the technology is used "the same way they would use photos" for ideation. For scripters, some "will probably use ChatGPT" to create "stub text," but others are free to "write it themselves." Vincke says it's up to each individual employee to decide how to use AI.
Vincke also says that he's not seeing some of the benefits often attributed to AI. While he claims that "experimentation is broader" using the technology, it's not making the development process faster. "I'm not 100% sure if you're actually seeing speed-ups that much," he explains. "You're trying more stuff. Having tried stuff out, I don't actually think it accelerates things." Suggesting that "there's a lot of hype" around AI, he also admits "I haven't really seen 'oh, this is really gonna replace things'."
Larian has around 30 concept artists, and recently "bought a boutique concept art firm at the moment that everybody was reducing them because they were going to AI." Vincke also says that "everything is human actors; we are writing everything ourselves. There are no generated assets that you're gonna see in-game. We are trying to use generated assets to accelerate white-boxing [...] we're talking about basic things to help the level designers."
Vincke admits that even when content is AI-generated, "you still will always have to alter it yourself," and that he uses the technology to help improve his communication as a non-native English speaker.
In the wake of yesterday's backlash, Larian has been attempting to clarify its use of generative AI. Both Vincke and publishing director Michael Douse have pointed out that the studio outlined its approach back in April.
On social media, Douse - who labelled AI artists as "insufferable" as recently as last month - suggested that the technology was a "tool" like any other, and that developers were free to choose whether they used it or not. Also on social media, Vincke hit back by saying "we're not 'pushing hard' for or replacing concept artists with AI," and said that "at the very early ideation stages we use it as a rough outline for composition which we replace with original concept art."
"Baldur's Gate 3 and Original Sin 2 are the blueprint for Divinity": Larian CEO Swen Vincke on why its next RPG is the "natural evolution" of the studio's 20-year journey.
