In light of recent controversies surrounding Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 having gotten its Indie Game Awards wins revoked due to its undisclosed use of generative AI, director Guillaume Brioche has now confirmed just how developer Sandfall Interactive had experimented with using the technology when the RPG was being made. In a Q&A session with YouTuber Sushi (which you can check out below), Broche spoke about how everything we can see in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is human-made. However, generative AI coming out in 2022 led to the studio experimenting with the technology as a potential tool.
“Yeah, we’re aware of what’s been going on with [Divinity director Swen Vincke’s statements about AI use],” explained Broche in response to a question about the studio’s use of generative AI and how it will be used in the future. “But I can say, everything in the game is human made. When AI first really came out in 2022, we’d already started on the game. It was just a new tool, we tried it, and we didn’t like it at all. It felt wrong. We had originally used it as a placeholder for textures we missed, but we took it out as soon as we found it.”
“But yeah, the concept art, voice actors, everything is human made. It’s pretty hard what the future [of the industry] will look like, but everything will be made by humans from us.”
Broche was referring to Larian Studios’ Swen Vincke’s statements about the use of generative AI at the studio from earlier this month. His statements about how generative AI was being used to “explore ideas, flesh out PowerPoint presentations, develop concept art and write placeholder text,” drew quite a bit of controversy among fans of Baldur’s Gate 3 and Divinity: Original Sin 2, who noted that using it in concept art would taint the rest of the art that was built on top for the game.
This criticism had prompted Vincke to issue another statement later where he spoke about how the tools were working as “additive” to the talents of the creative teams rather than generative AI serving as replacements to artists themselves.
“We are neither releasing a game with any AI components, nor are we looking at trimming down teams to replace them with AI. While I understand it’s a subject that invokes a lot of emotion, it’s something we are constantly discussing internally through the lens of making everyone’s working day better, not worse,” said Vincke.
The use of generative AI in the gaming industry has been a hot-button issue for a while, but discussions have largely picked up over the previous month, with Warhorse Studios’ Daniel Vávra writing his own lengthy statement about how the world should stop resisting the rise and proliferation of generative AI. In his statement, he noted that “AI is here to stay with us.”
“As frightening as it may be, that’s the way it is,” he continued. “Personally, it scares me the most in the music because you can’t even recognise AI there anymore.”
Metal Gear series creator Hideo Kojima also spoke about AI, and how we can’t go back to a world without it, comparing the technology to smartphones.
