The studio has confirmed that Divinity’s art and writing will remain fully human-made, while AI is only tested in limited development tasks.
Larian Studios addressed fan concerns over its use of AI in development during a Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything) held on 9 January (SGT). The session featured studio head Swen Vincke, writing director Adam Smith, and machine learning director Gabriel Bosque, who explained which parts of Divinity development are experimenting with AI and which remain strictly human-made. Other studio members were also present to answer questions that weren't related to AI.
This clarification comes after Vincke told Bloomberg last month that developers “often use AI tools to explore ideas, flesh out PowerPoint presentations, develop concept art and write placeholder text.” That interview led some fans to worry that future Divinity games could include AI-generated art or dialogue. The AMA provided a chance for the studio to respond to these concerns directly.
Reddit users asked about AI usage across Larian's different teams
Reddit user Priceless_Pennies asked about the role of generative AI in game development and whether different teams, such as writing, art, or coding, might adopt it differently.
In reply, Vincke confirmed that AI will not be used to generate concept art. “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.”
AI is being tested to help Larian's development process
Vincke added that AI is being experimented with across departments to improve iteration speed, but not to replace human creativity. “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 writing team is keeping AI out of dialogue and journal entries
Reddit user AmihanTheStoic asked whether the studio’s stance also applies to writing, and how generated placeholder text compares to standard stub text. Adam Smith, Divinity’s writing director, explained that no AI is used in dialogue or journal entries.
“The stance applies to writing as well. We don't have any text generation touching our dialogues, journal entries or other writing in Divinity,” Smith said.
He added that placeholder text generated by AI doesn’t offer any real benefit over traditional stubs. “To answer your second question, 'how does generated placeholder text benefit development over simple stub text'"- it doesn't. We had a limited group experimenting with tools to generate text, but the results hit a 3/10 at best and those tools are for research purposes, not for use in Divinity.”
Smith also highlighted the amount of work involved in crafting dialogue to the studio’s standards. “Even my worst first drafts - and there are a LOT of them - are at least a 4/10," he said, sharing that "the amount of iteration required to get even individual lines to the quality we want is enormous. From the initial stub to the line we record and ship, there are a great many eyes and hands involved in getting a dialogue right.”
Machine learning is used only in cinematics and animation
Reddit user TraditionalJob7651 asked for examples of AI-generated assets and how generative AI is used across departments. Gabriel Bosque, the studio’s machine learning director, explained that AI-assisted tools are currently used only within the cinematics and animation pipeline.
“There is currently one example of ML (machine learning) generated assets that end up in the game and that is within our cinematics and animation pipeline. In this pipeline we try to capture the actor's performances as best as we can, so we use ML models to clean, retarget and even add motion when it's not motion captured. These models are trained exclusively with Larian data.”
Larian ensures AI use is fully controlled and owned by the studio
Vincke also emphasised that any AI-generated work used in development is trained on Larian-owned data and that the studio ensures consent from all original creators.
“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.”
The Reddit AMA did not just focus on questions surrounding AI, but also on other topics surrounding Divinity, Baldur’s Gate 3, the creative process of Larian’s games, development tools, and more.
