Artificial intelligence has deeply infiltrated the gaming industry, but its actual usefulness remains a topic of heated debate. Take-Two Interactive’s CEO, Strauss Zelnick, recently made his stance clear, saying that even if AI could independently produce a complete game, the result would likely be “absolutely terrible.” In fact, he added, AI probably couldn’t even come up with a decent marketing strategy for Grand Theft Auto VI.
In an interview with CNBC, Zelnick said:
“Let’s assume AI had no limitations. Could we press a button tomorrow and generate a marketing plan on the scale of Grand Theft Auto? The answer is no. First, we simply can’t do that yet; and second, even if we could, the outcome wouldn’t be great—it would just end up as some kind of mediocre derivative.”
According to him, AI is inherently limited because it can only reorganize and remix existing data. That makes it useful for analytics, but not for the kind of creative work that drives companies like Take-Two.
“Anything that depends on analyzing historical data—AI excels at that, and it’s valuable in many fields. But for us at Take-Two, when it comes to work that doesn’t rely on that—creative work—AI performs very, very poorly.”
Zelnick also pointed out that the most common form of “generative AI”—which produces new content based on existing works without considering copyright—poses serious challenges to the game industry.
“We have to protect our own intellectual property, and more importantly, respect that of others. If you create something with AI, that creation cannot be protected by copyright.”
Although Zelnick has previously referred to AI as a “technology of the future” and even predicted that it could create more jobs, his perspective remains far more cautious and grounded than that of many other gaming executives. He has made it clear that those who believe “you can just push a button and make the next GTA 6” are “completely wrong,” emphasizing that if AI reproduces the work of human developers, those developers deserve to be compensated.
The above content is compiled by ModeZone, a fashion and entertainment magazine.
