Larian Studios Draws Harder Line On AI, Clarifies Stance In Reddit AMA

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Larian Studios, the team behind the popular Divinity series, recently held a question-and-answer session on Reddit to discuss their next game and address concerns about generative AI. CEO Swen Vincke made it clear that they won’t be using AI-generated art in their upcoming title, stating simply, “There is not going to be any GenAI art in Divinity.”

These remarks come as people are increasingly discussing the use of AI in creative fields, particularly after some games received criticism for using it. A recent case involves the highly praised RPG, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, which lost two Indie Game Awards – including the top prizes – after it was discovered the game had included AI-created content during its development. This violated the competition’s rules against AI use, even though the game was later updated to remove those assets.

During a recent Q&A, Vincke admitted that past conversations about using AI tools for initial artwork had caused some confusion. To address this, the studio has decided not to use generative AI at all when creating concept art for Divinity. Vincke explained that they want to be completely transparent about the origin of their artwork.

Vinke explained that they’ve chosen not to use AI-generated tools when creating initial concept art to avoid any questions about where the art came from. However, the team is always looking for ways to speed up the development process and improve the game through more experimentation. They believe AI could help with this, so they’re testing it in different areas to see if it can help them quickly refine ideas, reduce wasted effort, and create a better game overall.

Vinke emphasized that all creative content will be made in-house. If Larian uses AI, it will only be trained on assets and data that the company already owns.

Fans continued to ask questions, wanting to know if Larian’s ban on AI extended beyond concept art to areas like writing. They also remembered Larian previously using AI to create temporary text and were concerned this might unintentionally affect the final game. Adam Smith, Larian’s writing director, confirmed that the no-AI policy applies to all writing, including dialogue and journal entries in Divinity: Original Sin 2.

Smith explained that after testing AI for creating placeholder text, they found it wasn’t helpful. A small team experimented with these tools, but the results were consistently poor – scoring around a 3 out of 10. Smith emphasized these tools are better suited for research than for use in the game Divinity. They pointed out that even their rough first drafts are generally better quality (though Swen might have a different opinion), and significantly more editing would be needed to bring AI-generated text up to their standards.

Last year, in an interview with TopMob, Vincke explained that Larian Studios was using machine learning to automate repetitive and undesirable tasks, focusing on speeding up development. While there’s no announced release date for their next game, Divinity, Larian is aware of the challenge of following up the huge success of Baldur’s Gate 3.

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2026-01-09 19:11