I just think this, and all the alleged ‘AI generated placeholder who made it in’ is a good example of why AI placeholders are a bad idea.
Sure, you get a better looking game earlier in the process but I am certain that if this was an old asset made for a generic project, or something thrown together in 5 minutes, it would have been spotted before release and shipped with the right texture. And anything that is missed would be in an obscure enough place it feels like an easter egg.
The thing is I cant trust the rethoric for one second, I have been in game studios where the use of AI was a constant talk among people in higher positions of power. Where the idea of using "placeholders" was like if they dont get caught we reduce the work load and budget and make the deadline, if they do get caught we apologize and say its a mistake.
And the fact its here screams to me other uses cause its kinda like plagirism, if there is a tip there is an iceberg.
Problem is some other uses are unknowable, like internal concept art, things used in pre prod or prototyping, for background NPC dialog filler, barks, or bits of code.
It's funny because my company full-on pushes us to use AI. We're not doing games or anything artistic, mind you. But whether you're writing emails, developing prototypes, summarizing papers, or thinking of features in new products (hardware or software)... then yes, they ask us to think of AI as a modern reality and, if not use it, at least consider its potential as an alternative or potential competition.
Like, I get the concerns about thoughtless and irresponsible use of AI... but when I see the counterpush of "no AI whatsoever", the sound is a bit reminiscent of people insisting that banging rocks together is the best way to create something. And that's not even taking into account that they probably already use AI in every other aspect of their life, because it's baked in most modern applications.
I don’t necessarily disagree and depending on the dev I would be less likely to give them the benefit of the doubt. But I also think that your argument is really weak to anyone that’s pro AI.
‘AI placeholders makes it much easier for placeholders to make it in by accident’ is hard to argue against. We have already had several noteable examples of it happening.
Its weak to pro AI people by design, its kind of like dogwishtles, they know its harder to explain and it makes you look like a conspiracy theorist. But I am a gamedev in the same city as sandfall, Montpellier (yes I am sadly french rip) and unionized, and devs talk. One of the biggest thing that comes back around is AI and how people that have actual decisional power want to go about it.
Some are pressured by the market and shareholders and dont like it but will use it all the same, some know its bad press but like it and want to use it anyway, and some are just so far removed from reality they think its popular. I dont know of a studio that doesnt have that tension, hell even a small studio of less than 10 people that are far leftist and anti AI including my best friend have those discussion, cause the industry is rough and cutting costs might be the difference between making your game in time or even getting financial support to make it in the first place.
But thats how we will get an industry with normalized AI usage in no time. Some may be more brutal than others, I have talked to a concept artist that was fired and they trained an internal AI on her works, nobody will never hear about those cases. So for me if the slightest bit of AI use is visible I would bet a lot that it goes deeper than that. But maybe I am just a disillusioned and cynical gamedev to be fair a lot of us are.
The big issue is that placeholder stuff SHOULDNT BLEND IN SO WELL. The point of placeholder text/graphics/sounds/etc is to remind the devs "hey, you still need to make this thing properly before you publish." Wild patterns, flat textures, garish colors, stick figures, whatever stands out from the real art style. Otherwise it's easy to accidentally leave in (assuming they did only intend for it to be a placeholder).
They have found a way to make more money and now the trick is to implement a very small amount so anyone who protests it seems silly and then bit by bit they add more until it's mostly ai and were just sitting in Plato's cave looking at flickering shadows imagining we are being entertained by a well crafted video game.
If they are nothing else, llms (that they insist is ai) are condescending.
And the fact that people don't care cause it's only a "bit". You give them an inch and they'll eventually be parading AI all over the place before the end of the decade.
It truly is bleak now to be in the creative industry.
It's not bleak to all the creative people using it to streamline their work and spend time on tasks that have actual value to them. You know, actual professional artists.
Maybe instead of acting like any mention of the word AI is heresy you should realize that AI is a tool and not something inherently bad.
both take jobs away to funnel more money into the pockets of the ceo though
That's a reductive take that doesn't actually take into account how companies (especially video game companies) work.
Unless there is enough work for a full time employee, a game studio isn't going to hire an additional artist to "help" the concept artists streamline their process, it's just how any company works, they don't hire unless it's absolutely necessary. What they do is pressure the guys already working in the studio to crunch and work long hours in order to get results before the deadline.
So while yes, it COULD be like that, most of the time it's just a tool employees use to make their job a little easier.
Video game companies are completely willing to force employees to crunch.
Yeah, which is why using AI will limit that crunch time, and not take the job of anybody else. Which that was the point this guy was trying to make.
What makes you think they won’t use the “great efficiency” to ruthlessly cut costs through layoffs?
They said it, they hired a full concept art studio to do the only thing they especially mentioned they are using AI on. Does that sound like they are laying people off ?
You're literally complaining about something that we clearly have NOT seen them do. "But they could do it" just sounds like you are making up for reasons to find hate and not actually reacting to facts.
We have no way of knowing who they would or wouldn’t have hired without AI. There is a real chance that group would have been brought on for longer if not for AI.
It’s literally happening. And happening more frequently.
Companies are money driven. And video game companies are well known for their poor treatment of employees, often hiring contractors to finish games and letting them go right after.
I am specifically talking about Larian and Sandfall because that's the context of the post. Of course some companies will use AI as a way to layoff people, my point is that it's not every company so acting like "any company that uses AI is bad" is just wrong.
You’re the person who said “you don’t know how video game companies work” and talked about “game studios” and “crunch” in general terms.
All of which weren’t applicable to Larian and Sandfall use of AI.
As for their use of AI the big problem is that if the “good companies” (which tend to be private and would try to do right by their employees AI or not) do it, it normalizes it to be used by every company.
And the companies that will use in a negative way are larger, have more pressure to make money and employ far more people.
Plus this is also early on. These companies could easily cut costs as well.
If you need to actively decide to not screw over your employees for money when using something then that something is a net negative to that industry because for every company that decides to be “moral” the vast majority won’t.
That’s also ignoring the clear issue in place with how AI art is able to be generated at all. As it’s fully build on the work of people who often didn’t consent to having their artwork used in that way. But that’s an entirely different argument.
Hi, I’m a professional artist. My company has been requiring more and more AI usage. It absolutely does not save me any time and in fact, I’ve seen less and less unique ideas and a decline in creativity.
Generating sketches, coming up with ideas, making use of my actual brain… all those things are a 100x more valuable than sticking it into ChatGPT or prompting firefly/midjourney to make me an image.
Ok but specifically for games anything can be labeed ai: the way the characters move, the way that a level is created via a seed, how the mini games work etc. for decades that's what AI in games meant.
Can we be specific that we mean generative art AI so that I can know if I should give a shit or not?
Yea the devs already said they used AI for placeholder assets and during early development but tried to make sure nothing AI got shipped out. I think this is fine. But slop enjoyers will see that and go "See! AI can make video games! We need AI to make EVERYTHING for games!" There's a difference between using it to enhance the creative process and just straight up replacing the creative process.
Did you not read my comment? I was pretty clear in what my problem is.
I don't want people who think AI can and should do everything to say that every aspect of making video games should be replaced with AI because a few studios successfully used AI for temporary assets during development. My problem is that AI glazers will extrapolate a single use case of AI and say that because AI can be useful for one aspect it should be used everywhere constantly, which would be bad.
If you want to actually succeed at doing that, you probably want to proactively define good uses and bad uses. In my experience anytime people take a hardline stance, bad actors leverage what is intuitively non-harmful to erode the credibility of the overall critique. Basically, if any usage is essentially harmless you're going to need to be upfront about that in order to get people to pay attention to the ways it can be used that are harmful.
Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney thinks that. Plus have you seen these greedy companies with they aggressive micro transactions? You think a company like Ubisoft wouldn't just use AI to cut the biggest corners possible and make the most generic slop filled games imaginable if they could get away with it?
The fact that LLM were called AI by the mainstream is one of the worst things that could happen for the gaming industry because people don't understand the difference.
Microtransactions and loot boxes didn't become an utter plague to gaming instantly overnight.
Instead it slowly creeped in via either very small doses or just "purely cosmetic" until publishers got very bold to shove it into games in a way that forced you to buy them so you wouldn't lose access to the content and stuff you wanted or to not be put at a disadvantage in a multiplayer game that triggered immense backlash.
So even if the Clair Obscurus team only used AI in very small doses and for more practical purposes it should still be met with extreme scrutiny so as other developers and publishers don't get any "bright" ideas about overusing AI for game development that will utterly shred a game's credibility.
Hatchet job. People will attack Sandfall for this but then conveniently ignore Warhorse using ai to hallucinate tomes of fanciful and nonsensical slop they have dubbed “Bohemian history” and “the Hungarian language” for their games.
What are some examples? I’ve read quite a bit of those lore books in KCD2 and they don’t seem much different from those in KCD1, and I seriously doubt Warhorse beat the genAI industry by a few years.
Haven't you heard? Expedition 33 won all the gotys and is one, if not the, best game of all time, it was made by a small group of ex ubisofts that met on le epic reddit and made their first game with youtube tutorials, YOU CAN'T CRITIZIE IT!
The game devs (both here and recently Larian) are trying to see how far they can go, what they can get away with. If we let it slide here and there, we'll have AI slop in video games in no time. For fucks sake, somehow it was possible to make amazing, generational games when AI wasn't around. I don't care if they use it for reference photos - i bet that whatever you try to find, there are people making art of that.
The extra fun aspect to this shift in culture that was missing from the previous times we've been through something similar is that the genAI itself is no doubt being used to astroturf support for its own existence.
It's disheartening how many people in this very subreddit are defending its use. All it took was a couple companies waving around a shiny enough game to get us all to drop our priorities I guess.
I'm glad that I haven't bought it. I didn't like the esthetic, but I recently thought that maybe I will give it a try after all the awards. Happy that I didn't spend my time nor my money.
I mean, I wanted to refund the game when I found an asset filled with AI pictures and it completely ruined the experience for me, wondering what was actually made by people afterwards.
But by then I was way past the 2 hour window of return and all I could do was put the AI label on the tags. Worst part was a little voice insid emy head went "You should research before buying, check that they haven't used AI" but even if I'd done research nothing would've come up, because even after I found out, there were only two or so posts about it that poped up by being very specific with my search...
If this was the whole game, agreed, pitchforks out, I believe unless stated otherwise, it was for placeholder assets that they accidentally left in at release and fixed once called out.
I agree, but, I'd argue why even use the AI for the placeholders. There's decades of recycled assets and simple objects out there for these things already. The AI use is (to me) lazy.
Like I said, pitchforks out if they used it for the whole release, but even on the back end, why bother.
The Larian thing bugged me because the dev talking about GenAI kept lumping it in with art books and other reference materials. Those books explicitly credit the artists involved, they get money for those sales, and proper reference photos credit everyone involved.
I get being annoyed with some of the accusations thrown at them, but it came across as being purposely obtuse. Yeah there’s an obvious reason people dislike GenAI vs reference materials that properly credit the artists.
Also it makes me nervous just from a creative perspective. GenAI will definitionally provide generic ideas. It is not good at coming up with new things, just mashing together what the collective conscience of the internet thinks the average representation of your idea is. That is a rocky foundation upon which to build your art direction.
It’s like saying you based your game aesthetic on the free Adobe stock photos. You’re going to get the blandest possible results.
I'm pretty sure what they meant by using it for references like google search is that they were using it literally like a search engine to find references, not make them
They didn’t have to say anything either but also anything before the concept art is pre-concept art. That can have level but let’s use some logic. Spring boarding off AI tools just justifies further usage. It’s all about killing demand.
I usually like Swen Vincke and while his explanation was better than usual corporate speak, I am not a fan of Larian resorting to "AI" no matter the capacity.
They can literally just have the concept artist do a rough sketch or something instead of using "AI".
Good luck saying this on the Divinity and Baldur's Gate 3 subreddits though.
I get what you're going for, but arguing against something because of unreasonable public opinion is a terrible argument, it's functionally no different from saying "don't put black people in your games because a bunch of manchildren on the internet will complain about it"
It is legitimately easier and (most importantly) faster to use AI features in Substance Designer, than it is to import images from external sources. Especially when:
The image will likely just have to be stolen and uncredited anyway
The asset isn't likely to make it into the final game
You're doing this thousands of times
AI tools are used elsewhere in the asset pipeline anyways, in tools like Z-remesh in ZBrush. This use-case has been consistent for over a decade without replacing jobs.
On the one hand, it is very important to protect artists and devs, especially knowing how bad their conditions usually are in the industry
On the other hand, it is a very practical tool that helped them produce faster and most probably for cheaper, which - in a probably pretty small part, but still - has participated in making this miracle of a game happen
Look, I get it, but that's what a placeholder is. An asset you put there until someone with the correct skill set puts the real art. It's not an attempt at replacing art and that's an important line to draw.
The environmental impact of generating AI assets is NOT worth a temporary asset that you plan to replace. Also they quietly edited it out and barely commented on it. They are not sorry about it.
That’s why you generate in-house with local models on local hardware. Cheaper, lower environmental impact, no reliance on massive data centers, and better infosec. I’d be very surprised if they weren’t generating in-house.
People know this, right? You don’t actually need massive, energy-hungry data centers to generate things.
Can you tell me what you think the major difference in terms of energy and resource consumption would be if everyone using datacenters for their genAI tasks were instead doing it on their own hardware?
I'll answer for you: it would be largely the same if not worse. GenAI is bad for the environment, full stop.
Edit: Thermodynamics is still in effect, and any efficiency savings made in the datacentres get thrown out the window when you need to distribute all that cooling and energy use across millions of companies all running a stack of GPUs in a cluster for themselves. There's no fixing the appalling waste of resources that genAI represents.
If people are genuinely concerned about AI’s environmental impact, the only thing we can actually control is our own footprint. Even if all datacenters vanished tomorrow, AI image generation wouldn’t stop. It would just move to local hardware where it already hasn’t. So the most responsible choice is to run local models on hardware people already have, rather than pretending the problem will disappear if we just pull the plug on centralized infrastructure.
I mean, what’s next from hardline AI opponents when they finally realize generative AI isn’t dependent on data centers? “Stop using your own computers”?
So your answer to the problem of the environmental impact of AI usage is to place the onus on the consumer and otherwise ignore it? You even talk about footprint. That's just the sort of thing the fossil fuel industry has been pushing for decades to deflect responsibility for the damage they've done and look where that's got us.
You can ignore the fundamentals of thermodynamics as much as you like, but the reality is that all this work takes energy to do and spreading the impact as thinly as possible isn't actually reducing that impact at all.
Certainly the cat is out of the bag now technology-wise, but pretending there's nothing we can do to limit the negative effects it's having is like advocating for orgies during a pandemic.
I mean, what’s next from hardline AI opponents when they finally realize generative AI isn’t dependent on data centers? “Stop using your own computers”?
Got any other strawmen you want to conjure up and expect people to engage seriously with?
I’m not ignoring thermodynamics. I’m discussing a hypothetical because expecting companies to voluntarily abandon this technology isn’t realistic.
A hypothetical data center shutdown is one of the few scenarios that would noticeably curb casual use, and even that wouldn’t completely “end AI” since generative models already run locally and will only get easier to do so.
My “strawman” was rhetorical, just a prediction of where the anti AI argument goes once its initial objections inevitably collapse, which is why I don’t expect particularly reasoned engagement from hardliners.
the mass footprint is almost entirely due to companies like nvidia and openai pushing for bruteforce datacenter construction while making false claims about national security. companies have been using ML and inference for data sorting for decades and it used to be just part of regular load balancing. google started developing tensor units in 2013 to save electricity as shocking as that sounds now.
machine learning has been in use for a long time and the footprint was pretty small even with compute farms, similar to general computer use. people did not go out and sell by "gigawatt hour" like they are now. its been used across research labs around the world and never made a blip until openai and venture capitalists decided it was time for a new AI bubble.
Openai had a temporary hostile takeover for this very reason. The ethical part of the staff at openai disagreed with sam altmans plan's to completely fuck up the world with lies about AI capabilities, but money won out in the end.
Is it? My issue with AI is that is being used to replace actual human labor and effort, this wasn't a case of that, it was literally a placeholder, and then had real humans use it as a framework for their own original thing.
Ok if they could use AI to optimize the shit performance of their game then I'm all down. But no, AI is always used to save money and cut corners and produce a shittier product.
Don't get me wrong, I very much enjoyed the game, appreciated the work of all the performers/artists, and thought they deserved the accolades they received, but did they really need to use that for "placeholders"? If it was something that they were just gonna remove later, couldn't they have just used some basic MSpaint or some generic shutterstock photo or some other? Like, if they didn't even intend on sending the game out with it, why couldn't they have just used anything else?
At least they removed it and I still appreciate the game for what it is, but it's still kinda eh that they went with it until people pointed it out.
I couldn't care less, the US is the only place with this much backlash at AI (at a whopping 37% distrust, reddit just makes that seem larger), and in five years nobody will care anymore. Meanwhile game studios around the world are making bigger better projects with it without any backlash.
I figured that making Bangladeshi children mine minerals at gunpoint would be more worthy of mass outrage, or the fact very few people are responsible for you having no political power like you ought to, not who is deciding to incorporate AI
You have 1st world issue brain, this is literally beyond that, you're taking time to police production pipelines. There is only so much time in a day, i highly doubt you use them extremely well and somehow include caring about this kind of shit, beyond voting with your wallet when the time comes to not buy shit games. which the gaming community has proven they will buy literally anything
So the impacts of an ai data center on people in Memphis, a city in the US a first world country so a first world problem as you’d like to frame it, as a rebuttal to you trying to push away from people being anti ai is a non sequitur how?
Zoning issues and industrial waste handling is one of those things you're supposed to care about long before and after AI, not relevant to this production pipelines nonsense
A lot of you are being weird about 33 now.
"I wish my made up scenario was true so my hate for thing is justified."
Is that not the same reason we make fun of a lot of the chud posts on here
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I just think this, and all the alleged ‘AI generated placeholder who made it in’ is a good example of why AI placeholders are a bad idea.
Sure, you get a better looking game earlier in the process but I am certain that if this was an old asset made for a generic project, or something thrown together in 5 minutes, it would have been spotted before release and shipped with the right texture. And anything that is missed would be in an obscure enough place it feels like an easter egg.
The thing is I cant trust the rethoric for one second, I have been in game studios where the use of AI was a constant talk among people in higher positions of power. Where the idea of using "placeholders" was like if they dont get caught we reduce the work load and budget and make the deadline, if they do get caught we apologize and say its a mistake. And the fact its here screams to me other uses cause its kinda like plagirism, if there is a tip there is an iceberg. Problem is some other uses are unknowable, like internal concept art, things used in pre prod or prototyping, for background NPC dialog filler, barks, or bits of code.
It's funny because my company full-on pushes us to use AI. We're not doing games or anything artistic, mind you. But whether you're writing emails, developing prototypes, summarizing papers, or thinking of features in new products (hardware or software)... then yes, they ask us to think of AI as a modern reality and, if not use it, at least consider its potential as an alternative or potential competition.
Like, I get the concerns about thoughtless and irresponsible use of AI... but when I see the counterpush of "no AI whatsoever", the sound is a bit reminiscent of people insisting that banging rocks together is the best way to create something. And that's not even taking into account that they probably already use AI in every other aspect of their life, because it's baked in most modern applications.
I don’t necessarily disagree and depending on the dev I would be less likely to give them the benefit of the doubt. But I also think that your argument is really weak to anyone that’s pro AI.
‘AI placeholders makes it much easier for placeholders to make it in by accident’ is hard to argue against. We have already had several noteable examples of it happening.
Its weak to pro AI people by design, its kind of like dogwishtles, they know its harder to explain and it makes you look like a conspiracy theorist. But I am a gamedev in the same city as sandfall, Montpellier (yes I am sadly french rip) and unionized, and devs talk. One of the biggest thing that comes back around is AI and how people that have actual decisional power want to go about it. Some are pressured by the market and shareholders and dont like it but will use it all the same, some know its bad press but like it and want to use it anyway, and some are just so far removed from reality they think its popular. I dont know of a studio that doesnt have that tension, hell even a small studio of less than 10 people that are far leftist and anti AI including my best friend have those discussion, cause the industry is rough and cutting costs might be the difference between making your game in time or even getting financial support to make it in the first place.
But thats how we will get an industry with normalized AI usage in no time. Some may be more brutal than others, I have talked to a concept artist that was fired and they trained an internal AI on her works, nobody will never hear about those cases. So for me if the slightest bit of AI use is visible I would bet a lot that it goes deeper than that. But maybe I am just a disillusioned and cynical gamedev to be fair a lot of us are.
I hope you have a secretary who corrects your spelling mistakes instead of using AutoCorrect
Yeah my auto correct is fucked due to being in french and on my Phone sorry about that
No, what I mean is that most of the people use AutoCorrect while it is like using AI instead of hiring a secretary
Holy airball
The big issue is that placeholder stuff SHOULDNT BLEND IN SO WELL. The point of placeholder text/graphics/sounds/etc is to remind the devs "hey, you still need to make this thing properly before you publish." Wild patterns, flat textures, garish colors, stick figures, whatever stands out from the real art style. Otherwise it's easy to accidentally leave in (assuming they did only intend for it to be a placeholder).
This is just micro transactions all over again.
They have found a way to make more money and now the trick is to implement a very small amount so anyone who protests it seems silly and then bit by bit they add more until it's mostly ai and were just sitting in Plato's cave looking at flickering shadows imagining we are being entertained by a well crafted video game.
If they are nothing else, llms (that they insist is ai) are condescending.
Yeah, it feels like a slow creep.. bit by bit until we barely notice how much has changed.
And the fact that people don't care cause it's only a "bit". You give them an inch and they'll eventually be parading AI all over the place before the end of the decade.
It truly is bleak now to be in the creative industry.
100%. AI is heavy on the “manufacturing consent” phase atm
It's not bleak to all the creative people using it to streamline their work and spend time on tasks that have actual value to them. You know, actual professional artists.
Maybe instead of acting like any mention of the word AI is heresy you should realize that AI is a tool and not something inherently bad.
i don’t take as much issue with generating code as i do generating assets and concept art, which tend to be stealing more from copyrighted material
both take jobs away to funnel more money into the pockets of the ceo though
That's a reductive take that doesn't actually take into account how companies (especially video game companies) work.
Unless there is enough work for a full time employee, a game studio isn't going to hire an additional artist to "help" the concept artists streamline their process, it's just how any company works, they don't hire unless it's absolutely necessary. What they do is pressure the guys already working in the studio to crunch and work long hours in order to get results before the deadline.
So while yes, it COULD be like that, most of the time it's just a tool employees use to make their job a little easier.
Video game companies are completely willing to force employees to crunch.
What makes you think they won’t use the “great efficiency” to ruthlessly cut costs through layoffs?
They’re not going to stop crunching if they can get more work from less employees they’ll just have less employees.
Yeah, which is why using AI will limit that crunch time, and not take the job of anybody else. Which that was the point this guy was trying to make.
They said it, they hired a full concept art studio to do the only thing they especially mentioned they are using AI on. Does that sound like they are laying people off ?
You're literally complaining about something that we clearly have NOT seen them do. "But they could do it" just sounds like you are making up for reasons to find hate and not actually reacting to facts.
We have no way of knowing who they would or wouldn’t have hired without AI. There is a real chance that group would have been brought on for longer if not for AI.
As for “laying people off”.
https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2025-11-20/ai-cited-in-close-to-50-000-job-cuts-as-tech-giants-accelerate-automation
It’s literally happening. And happening more frequently.
Companies are money driven. And video game companies are well known for their poor treatment of employees, often hiring contractors to finish games and letting them go right after.
https://80.lv/articles/ex-343-industries-dev-contracts-one-of-halo-s-biggest-issues
There may be cases where people are hired to quickly finish something AI started but that only part of the story.
Edit: to say a majority of video game companies won’t try to squeeze every coin out of their employees is naive.
I am specifically talking about Larian and Sandfall because that's the context of the post. Of course some companies will use AI as a way to layoff people, my point is that it's not every company so acting like "any company that uses AI is bad" is just wrong.
You’re the person who said “you don’t know how video game companies work” and talked about “game studios” and “crunch” in general terms.
All of which weren’t applicable to Larian and Sandfall use of AI.
As for their use of AI the big problem is that if the “good companies” (which tend to be private and would try to do right by their employees AI or not) do it, it normalizes it to be used by every company.
And the companies that will use in a negative way are larger, have more pressure to make money and employ far more people.
Plus this is also early on. These companies could easily cut costs as well.
If you need to actively decide to not screw over your employees for money when using something then that something is a net negative to that industry because for every company that decides to be “moral” the vast majority won’t.
That’s also ignoring the clear issue in place with how AI art is able to be generated at all. As it’s fully build on the work of people who often didn’t consent to having their artwork used in that way. But that’s an entirely different argument.
I really hope you turn off the AutoCorrect and that you hire a secretary instead to take his/her job away when you type text
Hi, I’m a professional artist. My company has been requiring more and more AI usage. It absolutely does not save me any time and in fact, I’ve seen less and less unique ideas and a decline in creativity.
Generating sketches, coming up with ideas, making use of my actual brain… all those things are a 100x more valuable than sticking it into ChatGPT or prompting firefly/midjourney to make me an image.
I'm sure your anecdotal experience is proof that Larian is completely misguided and obviously they don't know what they are doing.
If they say it works for them, why would you doubt it.
Give a mouse a fucking cookie
Ok but specifically for games anything can be labeed ai: the way the characters move, the way that a level is created via a seed, how the mini games work etc. for decades that's what AI in games meant.
Can we be specific that we mean generative art AI so that I can know if I should give a shit or not?
They used generative ai for the newspapers in the game. Though it was removed after people pointed it out
Yea the devs already said they used AI for placeholder assets and during early development but tried to make sure nothing AI got shipped out. I think this is fine. But slop enjoyers will see that and go "See! AI can make video games! We need AI to make EVERYTHING for games!" There's a difference between using it to enhance the creative process and just straight up replacing the creative process.
"Placeholder" is code for "hope people don't notice".
No. Placeholder is code for "content we use to test out stuff without having to wait for the artist to finish their work"
Its like people havent developed anything in their entire lives bro.
When everything is a dogwhistle words lose all meanings.
So what are you actually complaining about here ?
Did you not read my comment? I was pretty clear in what my problem is.
I don't want people who think AI can and should do everything to say that every aspect of making video games should be replaced with AI because a few studios successfully used AI for temporary assets during development. My problem is that AI glazers will extrapolate a single use case of AI and say that because AI can be useful for one aspect it should be used everywhere constantly, which would be bad.
If you want to actually succeed at doing that, you probably want to proactively define good uses and bad uses. In my experience anytime people take a hardline stance, bad actors leverage what is intuitively non-harmful to erode the credibility of the overall critique. Basically, if any usage is essentially harmless you're going to need to be upfront about that in order to get people to pay attention to the ways it can be used that are harmful.
Seems like you are complaining about something that isn't currently happening though
Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney thinks that. Plus have you seen these greedy companies with they aggressive micro transactions? You think a company like Ubisoft wouldn't just use AI to cut the biggest corners possible and make the most generic slop filled games imaginable if they could get away with it?
The fact that LLM were called AI by the mainstream is one of the worst things that could happen for the gaming industry because people don't understand the difference.
Microtransactions and loot boxes didn't become an utter plague to gaming instantly overnight.
Instead it slowly creeped in via either very small doses or just "purely cosmetic" until publishers got very bold to shove it into games in a way that forced you to buy them so you wouldn't lose access to the content and stuff you wanted or to not be put at a disadvantage in a multiplayer game that triggered immense backlash.
So even if the Clair Obscurus team only used AI in very small doses and for more practical purposes it should still be met with extreme scrutiny so as other developers and publishers don't get any "bright" ideas about overusing AI for game development that will utterly shred a game's credibility.
Hatchet job. People will attack Sandfall for this but then conveniently ignore Warhorse using ai to hallucinate tomes of fanciful and nonsensical slop they have dubbed “Bohemian history” and “the Hungarian language” for their games.
What are some examples? I’ve read quite a bit of those lore books in KCD2 and they don’t seem much different from those in KCD1, and I seriously doubt Warhorse beat the genAI industry by a few years.
all of it, "bohemia" is a fake country and hungarians don't exist (thank god)
I posted something about this earlier this week and I had plenty of people down voting me lol
Times change in a week... I guess
Haven't you heard? Expedition 33 won all the gotys and is one, if not the, best game of all time, it was made by a small group of ex ubisofts that met on le epic reddit and made their first game with youtube tutorials, YOU CAN'T CRITIZIE IT!
The game devs (both here and recently Larian) are trying to see how far they can go, what they can get away with. If we let it slide here and there, we'll have AI slop in video games in no time. For fucks sake, somehow it was possible to make amazing, generational games when AI wasn't around. I don't care if they use it for reference photos - i bet that whatever you try to find, there are people making art of that.
The extra fun aspect to this shift in culture that was missing from the previous times we've been through something similar is that the genAI itself is no doubt being used to astroturf support for its own existence.
What a time to be alive.
It's disheartening how many people in this very subreddit are defending its use. All it took was a couple companies waving around a shiny enough game to get us all to drop our priorities I guess.
Art may as well be dead at this point.
I'm glad that I haven't bought it. I didn't like the esthetic, but I recently thought that maybe I will give it a try after all the awards. Happy that I didn't spend my time nor my money.
I mean, I wanted to refund the game when I found an asset filled with AI pictures and it completely ruined the experience for me, wondering what was actually made by people afterwards.
But by then I was way past the 2 hour window of return and all I could do was put the AI label on the tags. Worst part was a little voice insid emy head went "You should research before buying, check that they haven't used AI" but even if I'd done research nothing would've come up, because even after I found out, there were only two or so posts about it that poped up by being very specific with my search...
If this was the whole game, agreed, pitchforks out, I believe unless stated otherwise, it was for placeholder assets that they accidentally left in at release and fixed once called out.
I agree, but, I'd argue why even use the AI for the placeholders. There's decades of recycled assets and simple objects out there for these things already. The AI use is (to me) lazy.
Like I said, pitchforks out if they used it for the whole release, but even on the back end, why bother.
Knowing how vitriolic the public opinion on GenAI is a terrible idea to use it even for concept art like Larian did.
The Larian thing bugged me because the dev talking about GenAI kept lumping it in with art books and other reference materials. Those books explicitly credit the artists involved, they get money for those sales, and proper reference photos credit everyone involved.
I get being annoyed with some of the accusations thrown at them, but it came across as being purposely obtuse. Yeah there’s an obvious reason people dislike GenAI vs reference materials that properly credit the artists.
Also it makes me nervous just from a creative perspective. GenAI will definitionally provide generic ideas. It is not good at coming up with new things, just mashing together what the collective conscience of the internet thinks the average representation of your idea is. That is a rocky foundation upon which to build your art direction.
It’s like saying you based your game aesthetic on the free Adobe stock photos. You’re going to get the blandest possible results.
I'm pretty sure what they meant by using it for references like google search is that they were using it literally like a search engine to find references, not make them
Why would anyone need ai for searching the Internet?
Dunno. I still think it’s stupid, but that was my understanding of what was said
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They didn’t have to say anything either but also anything before the concept art is pre-concept art. That can have level but let’s use some logic. Spring boarding off AI tools just justifies further usage. It’s all about killing demand.
Agreed.
I usually like Swen Vincke and while his explanation was better than usual corporate speak, I am not a fan of Larian resorting to "AI" no matter the capacity.
They can literally just have the concept artist do a rough sketch or something instead of using "AI".
Good luck saying this on the Divinity and Baldur's Gate 3 subreddits though.
Maybe, but that doesn't mean you're right on the money about this.
I get what you're going for, but arguing against something because of unreasonable public opinion is a terrible argument, it's functionally no different from saying "don't put black people in your games because a bunch of manchildren on the internet will complain about it"
Massive difference between placating the tastes of the market in general and placing the taste of bigots.
The day someone wins GOTY with an actual AI generated game is the day I give up on the industry
It is legitimately easier and (most importantly) faster to use AI features in Substance Designer, than it is to import images from external sources. Especially when:
AI tools are used elsewhere in the asset pipeline anyways, in tools like Z-remesh in ZBrush. This use-case has been consistent for over a decade without replacing jobs.
shrug my only guess is they wanted one that looked more exact to that they were going for and there wasn’t “French newspaper” asset
If only they could had somebody with the skill set to create "French Newspaper" asset. It's a mystery to all.
I mean they literally do, that is why it was a placeholder until they used their own asset
I feel kind of torn here...
On the one hand, it is very important to protect artists and devs, especially knowing how bad their conditions usually are in the industry
On the other hand, it is a very practical tool that helped them produce faster and most probably for cheaper, which - in a probably pretty small part, but still - has participated in making this miracle of a game happen
Look, I get it, but that's what a placeholder is. An asset you put there until someone with the correct skill set puts the real art. It's not an attempt at replacing art and that's an important line to draw.
The environmental impact of generating AI assets is NOT worth a temporary asset that you plan to replace. Also they quietly edited it out and barely commented on it. They are not sorry about it.
Ai for something people aren't even supposed to see is kind of insane of you think about it. They were probably better off using mspaint.
Agreed
That’s why you generate in-house with local models on local hardware. Cheaper, lower environmental impact, no reliance on massive data centers, and better infosec. I’d be very surprised if they weren’t generating in-house.
People know this, right? You don’t actually need massive, energy-hungry data centers to generate things.
Can you tell me what you think the major difference in terms of energy and resource consumption would be if everyone using datacenters for their genAI tasks were instead doing it on their own hardware?
I'll answer for you: it would be largely the same if not worse. GenAI is bad for the environment, full stop.
Edit: Thermodynamics is still in effect, and any efficiency savings made in the datacentres get thrown out the window when you need to distribute all that cooling and energy use across millions of companies all running a stack of GPUs in a cluster for themselves. There's no fixing the appalling waste of resources that genAI represents.
If people are genuinely concerned about AI’s environmental impact, the only thing we can actually control is our own footprint. Even if all datacenters vanished tomorrow, AI image generation wouldn’t stop. It would just move to local hardware where it already hasn’t. So the most responsible choice is to run local models on hardware people already have, rather than pretending the problem will disappear if we just pull the plug on centralized infrastructure.
I mean, what’s next from hardline AI opponents when they finally realize generative AI isn’t dependent on data centers? “Stop using your own computers”?
So your answer to the problem of the environmental impact of AI usage is to place the onus on the consumer and otherwise ignore it? You even talk about footprint. That's just the sort of thing the fossil fuel industry has been pushing for decades to deflect responsibility for the damage they've done and look where that's got us.
You can ignore the fundamentals of thermodynamics as much as you like, but the reality is that all this work takes energy to do and spreading the impact as thinly as possible isn't actually reducing that impact at all.
Certainly the cat is out of the bag now technology-wise, but pretending there's nothing we can do to limit the negative effects it's having is like advocating for orgies during a pandemic.
Got any other strawmen you want to conjure up and expect people to engage seriously with?
I’m not ignoring thermodynamics. I’m discussing a hypothetical because expecting companies to voluntarily abandon this technology isn’t realistic.
A hypothetical data center shutdown is one of the few scenarios that would noticeably curb casual use, and even that wouldn’t completely “end AI” since generative models already run locally and will only get easier to do so.
My “strawman” was rhetorical, just a prediction of where the anti AI argument goes once its initial objections inevitably collapse, which is why I don’t expect particularly reasoned engagement from hardliners.
the mass footprint is almost entirely due to companies like nvidia and openai pushing for bruteforce datacenter construction while making false claims about national security. companies have been using ML and inference for data sorting for decades and it used to be just part of regular load balancing. google started developing tensor units in 2013 to save electricity as shocking as that sounds now.
machine learning has been in use for a long time and the footprint was pretty small even with compute farms, similar to general computer use. people did not go out and sell by "gigawatt hour" like they are now. its been used across research labs around the world and never made a blip until openai and venture capitalists decided it was time for a new AI bubble.
Openai had a temporary hostile takeover for this very reason. The ethical part of the staff at openai disagreed with sam altmans plan's to completely fuck up the world with lies about AI capabilities, but money won out in the end.
That’s how it starts. Placeholder assets so people who criticize it look silly, then they start slowly adding more and more ai.
Fair point
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Is it? My issue with AI is that is being used to replace actual human labor and effort, this wasn't a case of that, it was literally a placeholder, and then had real humans use it as a framework for their own original thing.
Every single software project in 2025 uses ai. Believing anything else is just wishfull thinking.
Source? Context?
https://preview.redd.it/09tlxiyajn7g1.jpeg?width=828&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d0d123bdb4fc4445a13c76439836fb772f41af2f
From what I have found
Interesting ! Ty
https://english.elpais.com/culture/2025-07-19/the-low-cost-creative-revolution-how-technology-is-making-art-accessible-to-everyone.html Here's the link to the article. When he says ai he is referring to generative ai.
Source: https://english.elpais.com/culture/2025-07-19/the-low-cost-creative-revolution-how-technology-is-making-art-accessible-to-everyone.html
Context: It costs less.
The fucking Fr*nch. Typical
Ok if they could use AI to optimize the shit performance of their game then I'm all down. But no, AI is always used to save money and cut corners and produce a shittier product.
If AI is in every game but Pokemon is that the only thing we'd play?
Don't get me wrong, I very much enjoyed the game, appreciated the work of all the performers/artists, and thought they deserved the accolades they received, but did they really need to use that for "placeholders"? If it was something that they were just gonna remove later, couldn't they have just used some basic MSpaint or some generic shutterstock photo or some other? Like, if they didn't even intend on sending the game out with it, why couldn't they have just used anything else?
At least they removed it and I still appreciate the game for what it is, but it's still kinda eh that they went with it until people pointed it out.
I couldn't care less, the US is the only place with this much backlash at AI (at a whopping 37% distrust, reddit just makes that seem larger), and in five years nobody will care anymore. Meanwhile game studios around the world are making bigger better projects with it without any backlash.
movie "indie" 10M game with full team uses AI shortcuts, shocker!
I just learned this. Asked for a refund. It has been months but i feel cheated. Scammed.
Gamers... Rise... Up?
Nah, I'm good, I feel like they should sit back down.
Awwww
Ok, you've convinced me, as a treat.
Man, whatever 🥀
Mfw this is what you want outrage over
It's called priorities mate
Give a mouse a cookie and next he’ll ask if using even more ai is okay. Rinse repeat, ai creep and suddenly it’s all slop.
I figured that making Bangladeshi children mine minerals at gunpoint would be more worthy of mass outrage, or the fact very few people are responsible for you having no political power like you ought to, not who is deciding to incorporate AI
We can care about multiple things at once and uh this IS a gaming subreddit so it’s kinda on topic of the sub.
You have 1st world issue brain, this is literally beyond that, you're taking time to police production pipelines. There is only so much time in a day, i highly doubt you use them extremely well and somehow include caring about this kind of shit, beyond voting with your wallet when the time comes to not buy shit games. which the gaming community has proven they will buy literally anything
Tell the people of Memphis that this is a “first world problem” lmao. Stop pretending that you can only call out one injustice at a time.
This is a non sequitur buddy
So the impacts of an ai data center on people in Memphis, a city in the US a first world country so a first world problem as you’d like to frame it, as a rebuttal to you trying to push away from people being anti ai is a non sequitur how?
Zoning issues and industrial waste handling is one of those things you're supposed to care about long before and after AI, not relevant to this production pipelines nonsense
I love how youre trying to push the issues of these ai data centers off of being an ai issue.
I kind of wish the entire game was made on AI just so the AI neo-ludists that loved playing the game now suddenly hate it lmao
Did chat gpt teach you that word?
A lot of you are being weird about 33 now. "I wish my made up scenario was true so my hate for thing is justified." Is that not the same reason we make fun of a lot of the chud posts on here
I just thought this would be a funny thing to say, but now I realize I may have been a bit too scarcastic, so people think I'm being genuine
You can be so on the nose that they can smell what you had for breakfast, but no /s is no /s.
Sorry
The Luddites were correct
Marginally. They should aim mainly for the heads of the owners of the machines, not the machines themselves.