Save for any further delays, Rockstar Games is set to release GTA 6 later this year, and it’ll easily become one of the biggest hits of this console generation.
The level of anticipation is off the scale; the open world action adventure title will sell by the bucketload. This sort of excitement has been earned over decades of top-quality games from the company, and each one has been painstakingly made by teams of talented and creative people.
Take-Two’s CEO, Strauss Zelnick, is sceptical about generative AI’s ability to replace that.
He’s already suggested that AI won’t replace traditional development, and that it can’t simply churn out a hit title on a level with the biggest games on the market.
In a new interview with The Game Business, he reiterates that point, firming up his stance on what AI is good for and what it isn’t.
“I was kind-of stunned by the market’s reaction, because its reaction was somehow seeing it as a threat to what we do, when it’s quite obvious that creation tools are beneficial for our industry,” Zelnick says.
His main point is that generative AI technology can absolutely be beneficial to creatives and aid game development, but its uses are limited.
“These tools may help you create assets, but that won’t help you create hits,” he says. “There are loads of assets out there now. It doesn’t matter if you push a button to create an asset, or it takes you six weeks, at the end of the day, you have an asset. And thousands of mobile games are launched every year, and there are only a handful of hits.”
Zelnick argues that AI might be able to generate things like artwork or writing, but to create a hit game on the level of NBA 2K26 or EA Sports FC 26 is “a completely different animal and does require human engagement and creativity”.
He says it’s just another technology that enables developers to produce games, but it isn’t capable of doing that itself.
“The notion that somehow new tools would allow an individual to push a button and generate a hit and bring it to many millions of consumers around the world, it’s a laughable notion,” Zelnick says.
He goes on to say that technology has never truly wiped out any form of entertainment in the past, and that he expects that will remain true as generative AI continues to evolve.
There are clearly use cases for generative AI within the production cycle of games, but in Zelnick’s view, that’s pretty much where it stops.
It seems like a pretty measured response in our view. Obviously you’re seeing the tech being used more and more in games, but even in cases where AI-generated assets are unabashedly included, such as ARC Raiders, they’re found within highly authored, hand-crafted experiences.
Speaking of ARC Raiders, developer Embark Studios has actually been replacing some of its AI voice lines with human recordings as they’re simply better.
Obviously there’s an argument that it’s a slippery slope, and that creatives leaning on generative AI in any capacity could lead to the tech creeping in more and more. Zelnick seems doubtful that’ll happen.
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