Despite making arguably one of the greatest video games of all-time in Baldur's Gate III, developer Larian has found itself in all kinds of hot water as of recently as the studio's stance on artificial intelligence became public. While many gamers and fans despise all things AI, Larian is vocal that the technology has its uses, and this has led many to be fearful of the upcoming Divinity project and the way AI is being incorporated into it in generative ways.
Larian CEO Swen Vincke has now touched on this topic once again in a Reddit AMA, where he explains further how AI fits into the developer's plans for Divinity. While you can read Vincke's full statement below, long story short, he explains that Larian intends to use AI to streamline development and hopefully turn around games more quickly and in a more cost effective way, not to create artistic assets and so forth.
"So first off - there is not going to be any GenAI art in Divinity.
"I know there's been a lot of discussion about us using AI tools as part of concept art exploration. We already said this doesn't mean the actual concept art is generated by AI but we understand it created confusion.
"So, to ensure there is no room for doubt, 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.
"Having said that, we continuously try to improve the speed with which we can try things out. The more iterations we can do, the better in general the gameplay is.
"We think GenAI can help with this and so we're trying things out across departments. 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.
"The important bit to note 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 created the data. If we use a GenAI model to create in-game assets, then it'll be trained on data we own."
Larian has long been an admirable studio for the way it operates and clearly it doesn't want to lose this trait even in the wake of breaching into the world of bringing AI into video game development. It should also be said that the way Larian is conducting itself on the AI topic is a reflection of many developers, who currently and will continue to use the technology to streamline areas of development that are more logical and less creative. There will be exceptions to this (cough, cough Activision and its clearly AI-generated Call of Duty calling cards), but if AI is used to simply enhance development and not replace key creatives, it could be beneficial, especially in an era where AAA games can take half a decade to make.
What is your stance on AI being used in video game development?