Baldur’s Gate 3 studio says it won’t use AI for concept art or writing

Following some controversy, the developers at Baldur’s Gate 3 creator Larian Studios have further clarified their use of generative AI. CEO Swen Vincke and other Larian developers held an AMA on Reddit where they answered users’ questions about the team’s next title, Divinity. They also fielded questions related to reports that the studio was using generative AI in its development process.

“So first off - there is not going to be any GenAI art in Divinity,” Vincke wrote in response to a question on Reddit. Last month, in an interview with Bloomberg, Vincke stated that while they weren’t using AI-generated assets in Divinity, the team was experimenting with AI tools “to explore ideas, flesh out PowerPoint presentations, develop concept art and write placeholder text.”

His comments were immediately and fiercely criticized online by gamers, developers, and former Larian employees. In response, Vincke issued a statement clarifying that they were not using the tool to generate concept art, but as something artists could use to iterate on ideas faster.

Now, in the Reddit AMA, he says they won’t use it for concept art at all. “We’ve decided to refrain from using genAI tools during concept art development,” he wrote. “That way there can be no discussion about the origin of the art.” But Vincke did leave room for the possible use of gen AI assets in the future.

“If we use a GenAI model to create in-game assets, then it’ll be trained on data we own,” he wrote.

In addition to art, Larian also clarified gen AI usage with text. “We don’t have any text generation touching our dialogues, journal entries or other writing in Divinity,” wrote writing director Adam Smith. He said text generation was only for research, not development purposes, and that the results were too low-quality when compared to a human writer and Larian’s own standards.

“We had a limited group experimenting with tools to generate text, but the results hit a 3/10 at best,” Smith wrote. “Even my worst first drafts ... are at least a 4/10 ... and the amount of iteration required to get even individual lines to the quality we want is enormous.”

While these comments might reassure players that at least gen AI assets won’t be in the final product, Vincke reaffirmed that gen AI would still play some role at Larian.

“Our hope is that it can aid us to refine ideas faster, leading to a more focused development cycle, less waste, and ultimately, a higher-quality game.”