Larian Studios AI controversy: Swen Vincke's Generative AI comments ignite backlash for new Divinity game

A lot of backlash from the fans on social media

Larian Studios CEO Swen Vincke just lit a fire fuse in the whole gaming world with comments on generative AI in a Bloomberg interview.

He was hyping up the new Divinity game and how the game will be turn-based & much larger and better than Baldur’s Gate 3. But he didn’t know that his few comments about the use of AI would spark a huge controversy and backlash from the fans on social media.

How did Larian Studios spark the AI controversy?

Larian Studios CEO Swen Vincke recently had an interview with Bloomberg, where he was asked about the use of AI and what are his thoughts on this.

To this, Swen Vincke told them about how they are using AI as a tool to flesh out “PowerPoint presentations, develop concept art, and write placeholder text”.

These tools are used for “exploring references” like Google or art books, generating rough compositions scrapped for human concept art.

Everything in the game will still be human work and human actors will work on it. However, this has already sparked a huge controversy and backlash from the fans on social media over the use of AI.

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Swen Vincke followed up message

Seeing how things were blowing out of proportion, Swen Vincke himself made another post on Twitter/X, to clear things up:

Ho*y f**k guys we’re not “pushing hard” for or replacing concept artists with AI. 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’m 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’t say we use it to develop concept art. The artists do that. And they are indeed world class artists.

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.

You can read more about his real thoughts and statements in the post.

Final Thoughts

Fan favourite Baldur’s Gate 3 and Larian Studios’ reputation have received a major impact overnight. A lot of fans and gamers on social media have openly declared that they will not play or support the new Divinity game, and the same for Baldur’s Gate 3.

For now, the game is still in the early phase of development and it is expected to be in development for 3-4 years. What are your thoughts about the usage of AI? Do share your thoughts and views with us in the comments section.

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