This morning, the news broke that Larian Studios, developer of Baldur's Gate 3 and the upcoming, just-announced Divinity, is apparently using generative AI behind the scenes. The backlash has been swift, and now Larian founder and game director Swen Vincke is responding to clarify his remarks.
It’s not like they are just going to do a visual spot check on each level to clear out the AI assets. They will probably tag it in the meta data as a placeholder. So some automated validation process can find every ai asset in a level. Not to mention game objects are wrapped in an object template. And then the template is used to place the object into the scenes. So they only have to replace the placeholder with the final object once in the template and then it will replace it everywhere the template is used.
Oh nooooo what will we do as a society If pewter mug number two worth 0 gold gets left in by accident? It’s literally the worst thing that could possibly happen in 2026. Nothing else could exceed the horror of a 50x50 pixel icon for worthless junk that was generated by a computer rather than a person. 😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱
But what if they miss something and do X for something unimportant
Well it doesn’t matter that much, it’s unimportant
But what if they then change their minds and do X…
I dunno man, I think you’re worried too much about a studio that actively said they want to do right by people rather than the folks out there actively causing harm
Issue with non-obvious placeholder art is that it’ll easily fall through the cracks.
It’s not like they are just going to do a visual spot check on each level to clear out the AI assets. They will probably tag it in the meta data as a placeholder. So some automated validation process can find every ai asset in a level. Not to mention game objects are wrapped in an object template. And then the template is used to place the object into the scenes. So they only have to replace the placeholder with the final object once in the template and then it will replace it everywhere the template is used.
Oh nooooo what will we do as a society If pewter mug number two worth 0 gold gets left in by accident? It’s literally the worst thing that could possibly happen in 2026. Nothing else could exceed the horror of a 50x50 pixel icon for worthless junk that was generated by a computer rather than a person. 😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱
It will begin with 50x50 pixel icons for “worthless junk”. It will end with big corporations automating everything, including the initial prompts.
Ah, the slippery slope fallacy on steroids.
They said they won’t do X
But what if they miss something and do X for something unimportant
Well it doesn’t matter that much, it’s unimportant
But what if they then change their minds and do X…
I dunno man, I think you’re worried too much about a studio that actively said they want to do right by people rather than the folks out there actively causing harm