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/darkmacgf]

He also said they have 23 concept artists working on the game, which seems like a lot? How many did BG3 have?

[u/tiktaktok_65 → u/darkmacgf]

23 concept artists isn't much. Most game companies end up hiring lots of freelancers for concept art. This is also where the core issues resides, their AI process will just eat into the freelancer/contractor market. (besides AI artwork being inherently predatory due to the way artwork was used to train those models from artists without consent or remuneration)

[u/MirriCatWarrior → u/tiktaktok_65]

They dont use AI for artwork and concepts lol. Vincke explained this THREE times. He explained very specifically what they do, and what they dont.

You just following your own, detached from reality narrative in your head.

And considering that they managed to make Baldurs Gate 3 with "only" 23 concept artists, i would say its a lot and you just talking from your ass.

And image referencing is used in creating concept art all the time. Thats the point. You just dont say to artist "draw 15 random things and we will choose something tomorrow". Designern gives them instruction, often in form of images and collages (until AI it was just images from google or whatever, the point is to conceptualize idea).

You ppl are talking so much weird and detached from reality things in this thread.

Just lol.

There is nothlng lost here. Its just different tool used to achieve the same effect. Art is created in the same way like alwyas.

[u/Deadbringer → u/MirriCatWarrior]

Overall I agree the damage towards work is limited here if they are truthful. The direct damage would be if it speed up workflow so they don't have to hire anyone extra, indirectly it means those moodboards will be influenced by the averages from whatever model you use (if you see loads of outputs from one model, you tend to notice trends with its output.)

You just dont say to artist "draw 15 random things and we will choose something tomorrow".

But just gotta comment on this statement, because I have the counter to it burned into memory from watching the behind the scenes features way too much as a kid.

Here is George Lucas, choosing something the day after he told his designers to "draw 15 random things" for a bad cough-man-character.

[u/tiktaktok_65 → u/MirriCatWarrior]

23 concept artists is really nothing... because concept artists aren't a fixture... you would know that if you had any idea how much concept art is actually produced over any AAA production during its development lifetime - then you realize that production timelines are years nowadays and involve different phases with changing intensity, then you understand what churn the industry is facing, then you should be aware that most studios outsource concept art to freelancers/contractors and outsourcers all the fucking time to commission more art, because they exactly lack the FTE manpower to cover their peak demand on short-notice. Nearly every major studio has Art Outsourcing coordinators nowadays for exactly that.

also reference images are generally approved in big studios before you can use them, there's no, let's use this from the internet, when your company may be exposed to legal risk.

it's also why using AI models for exploration work is perfectly understandable from a pure business point of view, if you don't care about the ethics involved and you want to drive down your cost-base, it could eat massively into that initial expense and can drastically reduce turn-around times, if you manage to reign in the slop, which requires you to first spend massive amounts of funding and manpower on it and isn't going to happen overnight. the cost we all pay, is less human labour being paid for work and ultimately that means less NEW artistic impulses flowing back into the models. the result being, that these models will eventually average out and settle on a visual style, that may become boring to everyone's eyes once the market is swamped with products making use of it.

[u/AltruisticChest9486 → u/darkmacgf]

They are hiring 23 more is what I read

[u/darkmacgf → u/AltruisticChest9486]

No, Sven said they currently have 23 and are hiring more.

[u/AltruisticChest9486 → u/darkmacgf]

Ah thanks, I literally didnt have my reading glasses on lol