Larian Studios Just Stepped on a Rake While Talking About AI Art
Baldur's Gate 3 boss Swen Vincke tried to defend using AI for references, but the internet wasn't having it. Here’s why the 'it's just a tool' excuse falls flat.
- neuralshyam
- 5 min read
You know that feeling when your favorite uncle—the cool one who buys you beer and lets you stay up late—suddenly starts talking politics at Thanksgiving, and the whole vibe just evaporates?
That’s basically what happened to the internet this week with Larian Studios.
If you’ve been living under a rock (or just haven’t been romancing a darker-than-average elf lately), Larian is the studio behind Baldur’s Gate 3. They are currently the undisputed golden children of the gaming industry. They listen to fans, they don’t do microtransactions, and their CEO, Swen Vincke, usually comes across as a genuine fan of the medium.
But then he did an interview with Bloomberg, and let’s just say he rolled a natural one on his charisma check.
The “Efficiency” Trap
Here’s the setup: Vincke was chatting about Larian’s next big project (presumably a return to the Divinity universe). Everything was going fine until the topic of Generative AI came up.
Now, usually, the “smart” PR move here is to say, “We love humans, computers are dumb,” and move on. Instead, Vincke admitted that Larian has been “pushing hard” on generative AI.
He clarified that they aren’t using it to make the final game assets—so don’t worry, Astarion isn’t going to be voiced by a robot—but he mentioned they use it heavily for “exploring ideas,” filling out PowerPoint presentations, and writing placeholder text. He even dropped the line that everyone at the company is “more or less OK” with it.
If you listen closely, you can hear the collective groan of thousands of digital artists.
The Clarification That Made It Worse
Naturally, Twitter (or X, whatever we’re calling the hellsite today) went nuclear. The idea of the “good guys” of gaming dabbling in the dark arts of AI didn’t sit right with the community.
So, Swen did what Swen does: he tried to talk to the fans directly. He posted a thread starting with a very candid “Holy f*** guys,” assuring everyone that they have 72 human artists and aren’t replacing anyone.
He argued that they just use AI for references. You know, to get ideas for composition or vibes before the real artists take over. He compared it to using Google Images or flipping through art books.
And honestly? That’s where he lost the plot.
Why “Just Using It for Reference” Is a Weak Defense
On the surface, saying “we just use it for brainstorming” sounds reasonable. It’s the standard tech-bro defense: It’s just a tool, bro! It’s like a calculator for art!
But here’s the thing that guys in suits—even the ones in cool armor like Swen—often miss about the creative process.
Comparing AI generation to looking at an art book is like comparing a microwave dinner to a home-cooked meal. Sure, they’re both “food,” but the provenance is totally different. When an artist looks at a photo or a painting for reference, they are connecting with a human experience. They’re seeing how light hits a specific texture, or how another human interpreted sadness through color.
Generative AI, on the other hand, is just math blending stolen jpegs. It’s a statistical average of everything it’s ever seen. It’s “slop.”
When you use slop as your starting point for a creative project, you aren’t being inspired; you’re anchoring your team to a hallucination. You’re asking your world-class artists to refine a machine’s guess at what art looks like.
The Process Is The Product
This whole drama highlights a massive disconnect between the people who run companies and the people who make things.
To a CEO, art is often just a deliverable. It’s a file. It’s a shiny jpeg that needs to go into a folder so the game can ship. If a machine can get you to that file 20% faster, or help you visualize the file before you pay a human to make it, that looks like a win on a spreadsheet.
But for artists, the value isn’t just in the final image. The value is in the struggle.
When a concept artist sketches, they make mistakes. They draw a line, hate it, erase it, and draw it again. In that process of iteration, they find the “happy accidents.” They discover the personality of a character or the mood of a landscape.
If you skip that messy, human sketching phase because you typed “cool wizard castle, dark vibes, 4k” into a prompt generator, you’ve robbed the project of its soul before you’ve even started. You’ve bypassed the actual invention.
Read the Room, Larian
Look, nobody thinks Larian is suddenly an evil corporation. They employ a massive team of incredible creatives, and they treat them better than 90% of the industry.
But this was a classic case of a tech-forward leader forgetting that efficiency isn’t the only metric that matters. Using AI to generate “placeholder text” or “concept ideas” might save a few hours, but it signals a willingness to engage with a technology that is actively hostile to the very people you’re hiring.
It’s like telling your chef you’re going to use a robot to taste-test the soup because it’s faster. Sure, the robot can tell you the temperature, but it has no idea if it actually tastes good.
Swen, we love you, man. But maybe put down the prompt generator and just let your 72 world-class artists do the thing you pay them to do. They’re pretty good at it.