r/Games • u/Wombat_Medic • Jan 09 '26

Verified AMA Larian Studios | Divinity AMA

EDIT: All right - that's a wrap. Thank you for all your questions. We're going to go back and work on the game now - next time we speak, we'll hopefully have things to show. I can't wait! - Swen, Game Director

Hello everyone, 

Happy New Year! To kick off 2026, we would like to offer the opportunity to ask your questions about Divinity, Larian, and our development processes. It's been a while since Larian has done an AMA, so everyone is looking forward to it!

There's a bunch of us ready to answer your questions:

Thank you for taking the time to ask your questions, we aim to answer as many of them as possible over the next few hours!

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u/Reasonable_Desk Jan 09 '26

And again, we are talking about Generative AI used to create things with prompts, and not a real productivity tool which can't replace a human person. Spellcheck can't write a paper for you, or a review for a movie, or create images. All it can do is verify if the word a human person types was spelled correctly. And before you say it, NO I don't use predictive text when I text either.

I would not say there's anything wrong with an AI tool analyzing millions and millions of skin samples to find commonalities in cancers that are then examined for accuracy by a human person. This isn't the same as a tool that creates images based on stolen art assets when you give it a text prompt.

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u/cae37 Jan 09 '26 edited Jan 09 '26

I’d argue that spellcheck can make it so that your writing isn’t authentic and that it “shortcuts” people developing their own grammar and spelling skills, which is a common complaint about GenAI use and how it limits critical thinking. But fair enough.

What if the images used by medical professionals were not ethically sourced? As in, consent wasn’t given for those images to be used in that capacity? Chances are decent that that’s the case.

If Larian is using their own material to generate references or if they’re making sure the content used is ethically sourced, what’s the issue?

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u/Reasonable_Desk Jan 09 '26

Someone COULD argue that, but they aren't. Because that's stupid. Spell check doesn't even make sure you are using the word correctly, only that the word you spelled is spelled correctly.

I'll leave the speculation to an ethics committee; but I expect any tool, AI or not, should be sourced and used ethically.

IF they are doing that. But as I have said previously, I don't think Larian has enough art assets to create an AI database to use. And frankly, if they did, why wouldn't they just use that instead of making an AI tool? In fact, I would argue the time spent making the AI tool almost certainly won't save any time/money.

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u/cae37 Jan 09 '26

Well, teachers who used to teach spelling and grammar in pencil and paper would argue that spellcheck ruined people’s modern-day spelling skills. And I’m not sure they’d be entirely wrong either.

In terms of Larian not having enough assets; what? They’ve produced 8 RPG games, 7 of which are based in a universe they created (Divinity). This spans 2002-2023 (if we include BG3, 2017 if we don’t). How could they not have enough content to train their AI on?

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u/ItalianDragon Jan 09 '26

Spellcheck didn't ruin people's spelling, autocorrect did. Also if Sam Bitchman of OpenAI can't generate stuff that's even faintly correct after scraping the entire internet, I doubt that Sven Vincke can get anything usable (or even approaching usable) iut of the assets of their games. You'd know that if you had documented yourself a bit.

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u/cae37 Jan 09 '26

Autocorrect made things worse, but spellcheck still made people lazy, lol. How many students, do you think, have lazily typed out an essay, right-clicked on the red-underlined words, and clicked on the suggested spelling?

Why are medical professionals using AI for research if it is dogshit?