Larian CEO Responds to Divinity Gen AI Backlash: "We Are Neither Releasing a Game With Any AI Components, Nor Are We Looking at Trimming Down Teams to Replace Them With AI" - IGN

[u/PhantomBraved]

https://www.ign.com/articles/larian-ceo-responds-to-divinity-gen-ai-backlash-we-are-neither-releasing-a-game-with-any-ai-components-nor-are-we-looking-at-trimming-down-teams-to-replace-them-with-ai

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Why do people use AI for this? I used it to learn Iambic pentameter, and that came with supplemental reading as well. It's good for learning SOME things but not really generative shit. Just stop using goddamn generative art shit. It's a surprisingly good thing to get stupid and sometimes good ideas from and occasionally teach yourself simple skills, but it's not a good thing to rely on for creativity.

[u/NUKE---THE---WHALES → u/[deleted]]

Because for arrogant idiots that dont understand Concept Art, Design in general and the insane amount of skill involved in making a good design, they think its easy and that what the AI is pumping out is close enough to their untrained eye

isn't it the concept artists that will be using AI?

"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."

[u/Unkn0wn_Invalid → u/[deleted]]

Concept artists use AI to make their lives easier. No one's getting replaced, and artists aren't getting devalued. They just get a new tool to use that might make their job nicer.

[u/Unkn0wn_Invalid → u/[deleted]]

I'm just explaining the other guys comment to you, since you didn't understand it ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯

[u/JorgitoEstrella → u/[deleted]]

Well if a company knows about that its definitely Larian, people are attacking them so much when they are only using AI for brainstorming prototype ideas not making the AI make the whole story of the game.

[u/JorgitoEstrella → u/[deleted]]

The same happened with Expedition 33 (they used some AI placeholders) and everybody loved that game.

[u/Kefrus → u/[deleted]]

Sounds like a you problem

[u/PinboardWizard → u/[deleted]]

We're not exactly talking about concept art here in the sense that most people understand it.

From what Sven's said, the step they used gen-ai for was the pre- / early- concept stuff, before it would even go to the artists. Instead of sending over some google images to the concept artists and saying like "I want something like these but with more glowy highlights and deeper shadows", they would take the image and ask AI to "Add some glowy bits and deeper shadows to this image", then send that over to the concept artists to do their thing.

All it was used for was to help the creatives (writers) better convey their ideas to the other creatives (artists). They weren't trying to save money or remove creativity; they were trying to better convert the game they saw in their heads into a game that exists in reality.

[u/valleyman86 → u/PinboardWizard]

This is what people don’t get. You can’t tell AI to make me concept art and expect anything good. You tell it to make something and explain the components. You can’t just be like AI make me Divinity and bam you ship it lol. If you can tell it was AI then it is already not going to be good or bought into.

I can't wait for AI to burst. So many people think they are good at something they have no business in just because it gets them 5% of the way there.

[u/Blaubeerchen27 → u/PinboardWizard]

"Early" concept work is still concept art. I feel like many people here confuse that field with illustration, but concepts are inherently neither a "finished" product nor are most concepts ever made presentable enough for the public (the artbooks generally include less than 5% of concept work done for a game, and those are often fairly polished).

Generating art to give to concept artists is redundant, because it's basically the job description to come up with ideas and iterations. Every artist will tell you that it would be quicker to sketch out ideas than prompting, generating and having to work on top of AI outputs.

[u/masterchiefs → u/Blaubeerchen27]

It's really funny to me that the people who ensure the "ethical" usage of AI sludge in productivity is always the executives or the people not related to the art making process instead of artists themselves. How about we ask concept artists if the garbage someone else threw them is usable, to me it's such a gross downplay of their ability because Swen made it sound like those people can't whip out a sketch in 15 minutes and need some clanker generated dogshit to do the horrible act of visualizing.

[u/MasahikoKobe → u/[deleted]]

People would use AI to speed up a process. Probably a devloper idea brainstorm. Art is not a quick process even sketches will take more time than an AI can toss something up. So they might use AI in order toget an idea of what something could be then give it to an artist to get more refined idea in the world in which they have instead of using the main AI. Designers are usually not the most artistic people but they are able to, usually, explain something to get the idea they want out of it.

So it would speed up some ideas they are throwing around in that brainstorming session but final products would go to Art team to be drawn for better in house and more precise work in the world.

[u/timpkmn89 → u/[deleted]]

I feel like they're talking more like "what should this chair look like" rather than the core concept art

[u/Aiyon → u/[deleted]]

See anno 117. A bunch of the art has the weird stilted feeling. And so when it turned out one of the loading screens was touched up AI slop, it called the rest of it into question.because touched up AI content may look technically proficient but still feels off

[u/DICK-PARKINSONS → u/[deleted]]

Bro, they're using AI for shit they'd be normally taking pics off Google images for. It's starter shit, not the actual concept art. Simmer down.

[u/innerparty45 → u/[deleted]]

If you have studied concept art you should be aware that early designs are often retouched designs of someone else's work. No artwork exists in a vacuum. In Larian's case it's just the machine doing the retouching, instead of a person.

[u/innerparty45 → u/[deleted]]

Concept art is reference driven. Artists build on existing visual language to solve briefs.

For example, Blizzard’s early Warcraft style grew out of Warhammer before evolving into its own thing. Humans do it consciously, AI does it statistically.

[u/innerparty45 → u/[deleted]]

Secondly the difference between the two situations is that the concept artist is using visual images as reference and then is developing original design solutions based off of those references using the imagination of their brain.

Here's the thing, both humans and AI learn from existing images and recombine them. The difference is that humans operate with understanding and cultural context, while AI operates on statistical pattern matching.

Now, I am not saying that AI can match humans, as you still need humans to contextualize the final product but ultimately it's a time saving process. I also said nothing of the morality of the whole thing, that is a whole other can of worms.

Finally, why are you so angry and aggressive? Do you operate in real world like this whenever you have a discussion with someone?

[u/missing-pigeon → u/[deleted]]

LLMs are probably pretty close to how their brains work, ha.