Summary
The introduction of generative artificial intelligence (AI) into the technological landscape has implications, but Take-Two’s chief executive officer Strauss Zelnick doesn’t believe that gaming will be greatly affected by the technology.
His rationale is simple - every successful game has brought something new to the table, and artificial intelligence is incapable of creating anything new or unique.
Artificial Intelligence Can’t Create Hits
Zelnick touched upon this topic in an interview with Carolyn Dailey for her bookThe Creative Entrepreneur(thanks,GamesRadar+), saying, “I’m not worried about AI creating hits, because it’s built on data that already exists. It’s backward-looking. Big hits are forward-looking and, therefore, need to be created out of thin air. Being the most creative means not just thinking outside the box; it means there is no box.”
Zelnick, atop his mountain of shark cards and GTA+ subscriptions, is correct. It feels as if people have become so disconnected from the creative process that they’ve forgotten that great games are born from the collective creativity of a team of developers. You can’t generate a unique identity from a data set. A future where you can generate an exact clone of a popular game could be on the horizon, but we already have that game. What’s the point of playing a pale imitation of a game that already exists?
“Hire the best creators and insist they pursue their passions,” Zelnick continued. “Encourage them to always try something new and to stay away from derivative and copycat works… In Hollywood, it’s common to pitch your product as ‘it’s a combination of Spiderman meets Batman meets Back to the Future’ … We don’t do that here; we want something that you’ve never seen before.”
Despite Zelnick’s salient point against the use of generative AI, voice actors in the United States arecurrently embroiled in industrial actionregarding protections against AI. SAG-AFTRA, the union organising the ongoing strike, wants ironclad protections that prevent studios from using artificial intelligence to mimic an actor’s voice likeness. A major fear of SAG-AFTRA is that studios will compensate an actor for an initial performance, train AI on the dataset the actor just provided and then continue to use their voice likeness without further compensation.
As forGrand Theft Auto 6, the game is still expected to release in fall 2025. Interestingly,publishers aren’t scheduling releases for this periodbecause they don’t want to compete against GTA 6, which is likely to monopolise player time and money during the month it releases.
