Productivity AutomationInternal OnlyVerified
Reviewed and published by trentmaziarz, March 20, 2026. Discovered and drafted by our automated research pipeline.
Larian staff use generative AI tools to explore rough ideas and create visual references during the earliest stages of game development — similar to doing an image search online but using AI to generate the reference image instead of finding one. None of this output appears in shipped games.
Details
The December 2025 Bloomberg interview reported that developers used AI tools to flesh out internal presentations and explore creative directions at the ideation stage. CEO Swen Vincke and Publishing Director Michael Douse both characterized this as equivalent to searching reference books or Google Images — a starting point for human artists to develop from, not a source of finished assets. Vincke also described using AI tools to speed up early-stage level design prototyping, a process sometimes called "whiteboxing." Following the backlash and January 2026 AMA, generative AI use in concept art was formally banned, but Vincke confirmed the studio continues to experiment with generative AI tools across other departments.
Products affected
DivinityInternal development workflows
Sources & Evidence
News Article
Other practices by Larian Studios
Creative GenLarian uses machine learning models to clean up and adapt motion capture data from human actors so it can be applied to game characters of wildly different body shapes — like a tiny halfling or a towering dragonborn. These models are trained only on data Larian owns, and their output appears in shipped games.Creative GenLarian's artists experimented with generative AI tools to explore rough visual ideas at the very earliest stage of concept art development — similar to how a designer might flip through reference books. After significant backlash from fans and former employees in December 2025, the studio formally banned generative AI from all concept art work in January 2026.Creative GenA small group at Larian Studios tested generative AI text generation tools for research purposes during early development of Divinity, the studio's next RPG. Writing Director Adam Smith stated at a January 9, 2026 Reddit AMA that the tools scored '3/10 at best' and that no AI-generated text touches dialogue, journal entries, or any other written content in Divinity.
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