Belgian games developer Larian Studios has confirmed that there will be no generative AI used for concept art during the creation of the upcoming RPG Divinity.
In a Reddit ask me anything (AMA), CEO and co-founder Swen Vincke said that the company would not use generative AI as part of the concept art process. The studio lead added that no concept art had been created using generative AI, but said that he can see how people were confused by his previous remarks.
Vincke previously told Bloomberg that it had tried to incorporate AI into the creation of Divinity, which resulted in a backlash, particularly due to the developer seemingly using it in the creation of concept art. The studio CEO later clarified that it was not replacing concept artists with AI, adding that the company had used the technology “to explore things”.
In the Reddit AMA, Vincke said that it was removing generative AI from the entire concept art process to ensure that players knew all art is original.
“There is not going to be any generative AI art in Divinity,” he wrote.
“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 generative AI tools during concept art development.
“That way, there can be no discussion about the origin of the art.”
Vincke continued, saying that Larian did still plan to use generative AI internally with the hope of the technology speeding up development.
“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,” he said.
“We think generative AI 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 studio CEO ended his reply by saying that if Larian does use generative AI to make “creative assets” for Divinity, it will be on a model trained on its own internal data.
“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,” he said.
“If we use a generative AI model to create in-game assets, then it’ll be trained on data we own.”
Larian Studios’ Baldur’s Gate 3 has sold over 20 million copies to date. The developer recently announced a new entry in its Divinity franchise at The Game Awards 2025.
