Larian CEO Swen Vincke says it isn’t using generative AI for Divinity art anymore, but it’s still experimenting with it — “We’re trying things out across departments”

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In late 2025, a major debate arose in the gaming world when Larian Studios, the creators of Baldur’s Gate 3, revealed they were exploring using AI to brainstorm ideas for their next role-playing game, Divinity.

The misunderstanding started after a Bloomberg interview with Larian CEO Swen Vincke seemed to indicate the studio was heavily investing in generative AI. Both Vincke and publishing director Michael Douse clarified that Larian wasn’t actively pursuing AI, but rather exploring it as an optional tool to help concept artists create quick visual references. They also confirmed that no AI-generated content would appear in the game Divinity itself.

A lot of people were upset about Larian Studios using AI, feeling that it unfairly takes art from the internet. They pointed out that AI-generated images are different from an artist simply finding inspiration from online sources or books. In response, Larian’s Vincke promised to address these concerns by hosting a Q&A session early next year to explain their process.

Larian Studios recently held an “Ask Me Anything” session on the r/Games subreddit. During the session, a fan asked about their use of generative AI. Studio representatives confirmed they’ve stopped using the technology for creating concept art and are not using it for any writing either.

To start, we won’t be using any AI-generated art in Divinity,” explained Vincke. “We’ve heard the discussion around us exploring AI tools for concept art, and we want to clarify that doesn’t mean the final concept art is created *by* AI. We realize this caused some confusion.

To avoid any questions about where our artwork comes from, we’ve decided not to use AI tools when creating concept art.

Fans who were concerned about Larian Studios using AI to create concept art will be pleased to hear the studio is adjusting its approach. While they haven’t abandoned AI completely, they’ve decided to limit its use. Larian believes AI can still be a useful tool for quickly exploring new ideas.

We’re always working to speed up our game development process. More frequent testing and refinement generally leads to better gameplay. We believe artificial intelligence (AI) can help us achieve this, so we’re exploring its use in various teams. Our goal is to use AI to quickly improve our ideas, streamline development, reduce wasted effort, and ultimately create a better game.

I was really glad to hear the CEO say they’re definitely looking into new technologies! It sounds like they’re committed to giving their developers the best tools possible and making things run smoother at the studio, which is awesome.

Larian Studios seems to be softening its stance on AI-generated content in its game, Divinity. While they previously said the game wouldn’t include any, Vincke now suggests it *might* be possible – but only if the AI was trained using content created by Larian themselves.

We’re committed to ensuring all in-game content created with AI is ethically sourced. That means we’ll only use AI models trained on data we fully own and have the rights to use, guaranteeing we respect the creators and origins of the information. We won’t create anything for a game using AI unless we’re completely certain about where the training data came from and have permission to use it.

It’s positive that Larian Studios is open about its exploration of generative AI, even though many will be upset to learn they’re still testing it despite previously saying they wouldn’t use it for concept art. If they do end up using AI to create content for Divinity, I hope it’s a decision made with the support of all employees, not just company leaders.

Larian Studios recently stopped using AI-generated images for concept art, which many fans are happy about. But what if they *did* use AI to create content for future Divinity games, as long as the AI was trained only on artwork and data they’ve already created themselves? We’d love to hear your thoughts on that – share them in the comments below!

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2026-01-09 22:10