{"id":354637,"date":"2025-12-17T20:43:14","date_gmt":"2025-12-17T20:43:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/354637\/"},"modified":"2025-12-17T20:43:14","modified_gmt":"2025-12-17T20:43:14","slug":"larian-studio-head-defends-additive-gen-ai-use-after-backlash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/354637\/","title":{"rendered":"Larian Studio Head Defends ‘Additive’ Gen AI Use After Backlash"},"content":{"rendered":"

Larian Studios is experimenting with generative AI<\/a> and fans aren\u2019t too happy. The head of the Baldur\u2019s Gate 3 maker, Swen Vincke, released a new statement to try to explain the studio\u2019s stance in more detail and make clear the controversial tech isn\u2019t being used to cut jobs. \u201cAny [Machine Learning] tool used well is additive to a creative team or individual\u2019s workflow, not a replacement for their skill or craft,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

He was responding to a backlash that arose earlier today from a Bloomberg interview<\/a> which reported that Larian was moving forward with gen AI despite some internal concerns among staff. Vincke made clear the tech was only being used for things like placeholder text, PowerPoint presentations, and early concept art experiments and that nothing AI-generated would be included in Larian\u2019s upcoming RPG, Divinity<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The reaction on social media was swift. \u201cDon\u2019t mind me, currently living through my personal 9\/11,\u201d wrote<\/a> one fan on Reddit. \u201cConsider my feedback: I loved working at Larian until AI,\u201d wrote<\/a> an artist who worked on BG3. \u201creconsider and change your direction, like, yesterday. show your employees some respect. they are world-class & do not need AI assistance to come up with amazing ideas.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vincke has since tried to address those concerns in a long statement sent to IGN<\/a>:<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve been continuously increasing our pool of concept artists, writers and story-tellers, are actively putting together writer rooms, casting and recording performances from actors and hiring translators.<\/p>\n

Since concept art is being called out explicitly \u2013 we have 23 concept artists and have job openings for more. These artists are creating concept art day in day out for ideation and production use.<\/p>\n

Everything we do is incremental and aimed at having people spend more time creating.<\/p>\n

Any ML tool used well is additive to a creative team or individual\u2019s workflow, not a replacement for their skill or craft.<\/p>\n

We are researching and understanding the cutting edge of ML as a toolset for creatives to use and see how it can make their day-to-day lives easier, which will let us make better games.<\/p>\n

We are neither releasing a game with any AI components, nor are we looking at trimming down teams to replace them with AI.<\/p>\n

While I understand it\u2019s a subject that invokes a lot of emotion, it\u2019s something we are constantly discussing internally through the lens of making everyone\u2019s working day better, not worse.<\/p>\n

The studio head reiterates that Larian is hiring more artists, not fewer, and that it\u2019s bulking up its creative resources for its upcoming game, not trying to cut corners with AI. There won\u2019t be AI in Divinity, Vincke has promised, and the aim is to help employees, not force the tech on them as some publishers like EA have reportedly been doing<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But the statement doesn\u2019t necessarily address deeper divisions over generative AI tools, which many have likened to being plagiarism machines, and the skepticism that\u2019s bound to arise from letting it near game development at all. \u201cEarly Access and the way they managed their community across all their updates helped humanize that team in ways that only helped Baldur\u2019s Gate 3, weird for the studio to be so willing to throw all that goodwill away,\u201d wrote<\/a> former Giant Bomb host Jeff Gerstmann.<\/p>\n

Update 12\/16\/2025 2:58 p.m. ET: Vincke followed up with a separate statement on on X<\/a> rejecting the idea that the company is \u201cpushing hard\u201d on AI:<\/p>\n

Holy fuck guys we\u2019re not \u2018pushing hard\u2019 for or replacing concept artists with AI.<\/p>\n

We have a team of 72 artists of which 23 are concept artists and we are hiring more. The art they create is original and I\u2019m very proud of what they do. I was asked explicitly about concept art and our use of Gen AI. I answered that we use it to explore things. I didn\u2019t say we use it to develop concept art. The artists do that. And they are indeed world class artists.<\/p>\n

We use AI tools to explore references, just like we use google and art books. At the very early ideation stages we use it as a rough outline for composition which we replace with original concept art. There is no comparison.<\/p>\n

I talked about how we use ML here if you would like to know more [here<\/a>].<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve hired creatives for their talent, not for their ability to do what a machine suggests, but they can experiment with these tools to make their lives easier.<\/p>\n

Update 12\/17\/2025 9:16 a.m. ET: Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier posted a transcript<\/a> from his interview of Vincke answering questions about AI for further context. \u201cI think you would find the same argument back in the days for a lot of things, right?\u201d the CEO says when pressed about why the studio is experimenting with AI. \u201cAnything that was has been automated has always considered\u2013I think the part of this job is to make sure that you are competitive and state of the art. So if you don\u2019t look at the state of the art, you will eventually regret it. That\u2019s gonna be even worse for developers.\u201d<\/p>\n

If I had known the two paragraphs about genAI in my article today would be so controversial, I would have expanded them a bit! Here’s a rough transcript of the relevant portion of my interview with Swen Vincke, so everyone has all the context. (Full article here: www.bloomberg.com\/news\/newslet\u2026)<\/p>\n

\u2014 Jason Schreier (@jasonschreier.bsky.social)<\/a> 2025-12-16T23:52:43.239Z<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Larian Studios is experimenting with generative AI and fans aren\u2019t too happy. The head of the Baldur\u2019s Gate…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":354638,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[256,254,255,64,63,194466,194467,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-354637","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-au","12":"tag-australia","13":"tag-divinity","14":"tag-larian-studios","15":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354637","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=354637"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354637\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/354638"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=354637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=354637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=354637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}