Gen AI causes more upset as Larian boss responds to Divinity backlash

The CEO of Larian Studios has faced criticism for the studio’s stance on generative AI, as Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is dragged into the conversation.

The use of generative AI in game development has been a big issue over recent years, but it has blown up to an even greater degree in 2025.

That’s true of AI in general, but as developers become more open about using it, an increasing number of players are calling out against its use, while platforms like Steam require disclaimers if generative AI makes its way into the final product.

Games like Arc Raiders and Call Of Duty: Black Ops 7 have used the tool to create in-game assets, with some blowback, but now the developer behind Baldur’s Gate 3, Larian Studios, has come under fire for its stance on the matter.

In an interview with Bloomberg, Larian Studios CEO Swen Vincke explained how the studio uses generative AI during development. As paraphrased by Bloomberg, the studio has apparently been ‘pushing hard’ on the tool, despite the fact it ‘hasn’t led to big gains in efficiency’.

Vincke states that there won’t be any AI-generated content in the studio’s next game, Divinity, but outlined that it is used (in Bloomberg’s phrasing) to ‘explore ideas, flesh out PowerPoint presentations, develop concept art and write placeholder text’.

The report states this has led to some pushback at Larian from employees, but Vincke has tried to downplay this by saying, ‘I think at this point everyone at the company is more or less OK with the way we’re using it.’

These comments have sparked backlash on social media, including some from several former employees.

On Bluesky, Selena Tobin, a former junior environment artist at Larian, wrote: ‘Consider my feedback: I loved working at @larianstudios.com until AI. Reconsider and change your direction, like, yesterday.

‘Show your employees some respect, they are world class and do not need AI assistance to come up with amazing ideas.’

The heated response prompted Vincke to clarify his comments in a post on X. ‘Holy f*** guys we’re not ‘pushing hard’ for or replacing concept artists with AI,’ he wrote.

‘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.’

He added: ‘We’ve 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.’

While generative AI can certainly help speed up certain processes in game development, like administrative tasks, the bigger concern is when it veers into the creative work, such as voiceovers and art assets.

As pointed out by Vincke (and outlined in our recent interview with The Witness creator Jonathan Blow), many game developers today use generative AI as a placeholder for assets. However, there’s clearly a very high chance of these assets slipping through the cracks and making their way into the final game.

We’ve already seen some examples of this. Earlier this year, 11 Bit Studios, creators of The Alters, mistakenly left in AI generated text which was designed to be a placeholder. Meanwhile, Sandfall Interactive’s Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, which used generative AI in a similar vein, had temporary textures quietly patched out shortly after launch.

It all begs the question of what time is actually being saved by using generative AI, or what purpose it serves, if developers have to worry about cleaning up these placeholders later. Especially as Vincke’s comment, about AI only being of minor help, seems to be the common consensus.

There are cases where assets created using AI are only removed after players kick up a fuss, like with Jurassic World Evolution 3’s scientist portraits, which raises its own kind of concern over how widespread its use actually is.

It remains to be seen if this pushback will lead to a change in how it’s implemented down the line, but when you’ve got executives like Epic CEO Tim Sweeney calling for AI labels to be removed because it ‘makes no sense’ today, it’s a worrying sign of how quickly it has, and likely will continue, to creep into video games at large.

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