Baldur's Gate 3 director u-turns on the use of AI art in Divinity: "We've decided to refrain from using genAI tools during concept art development"

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It's a major change of tune

Divinity
(Image credit: Larian Studios)

Baldur's Gate 3 and Divinity director Swen Vincke has announced his studio will no longer use generative AI for any aspect of concept art development.

In the Divinity AMA running today, Vincke said that "there is not going to be any GenAI art in Divinity." Previously, the studio had attempted to clarify that no concept art was generated using generative AI tech, but now, it has also confirmed that "we've decided to refrain from using genAI tools during concept art development. That way there can be no discussion about the origin of the art."

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Vincke says the studio will continue to assess the tech as part of an effort to "continuously try to improve the speed with which we can try things out." He argues that "the more iterations we can do, the better in general the gameplay is. We think GenAI can help with this."

The "important bit," he says, is that "we will not generate 'creative assets' that end up in a game without being 100% sure about the origins of the training data and the consent of those who crated the data. If we use a GenAI model to create in-game assets, then it'll be trained on data we own."

After Divinity's reveal last month, the revelation that Larian had used generative AI in some of its concepting work caused significant backlash, which is part of why today's AMA is happening in the first place.

As Clair Obscur: Expedition 33's AI use resurfaces amid backlash against Larian, Divinity lead says "we have good QA and leads" to fans questioning if the RPG will accidentally ship with AI assets.

Ali Jones
Ali Jones
Managing Editor, News

I'm GamesRadar's Managing Editor for news, shaping the news strategy across the team. I started my journalistic career while getting my degree in English Literature at the University of Warwick, where I also worked as Games Editor on the student newspaper, The Boar. Since then, I've run the news sections at PCGamesN and Kotaku UK, and also regularly contributed to PC Gamer. As you might be able to tell, PC is my platform of choice, so you can regularly find me playing League of Legends or Steam's latest indie hit.

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