Take-Two CEO Says AI Can't Make the Next GTA Because It's Just a Glorified History Book
While everyone else is either panicking or drooling over AI's potential in gaming, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick just poured a nice, cold bucket of reality over the whole thing. Can AI create the next Grand Theft Auto? His answer is a resounding "hell no."
Speaking at the CNBC Technology Executive Council Summit, Zelnick, the guy in charge of behemoths like GTA, Red Dead, and NBA 2K, made it clear he's not an AI "naysayer," but he thinks its impact on actual game development is "still limited" right now. And his reasons are pretty damn solid.
Reason 1: The Copyright Nightmare
First off, there's the giant, unavoidable legal minefield: intellectual property. Zelnick pointed out the obvious – if you generate something purely with AI, that content isn't legally protectable. More than that, game companies have to be incredibly careful not to infringe on other people's IP when using AI tools trained on god-knows-what data.
This whole data-rights mess is already causing lawsuits and headaches across Hollywood, music, and now gaming. With tools like OpenAI's Sora making near-realistic videos from prompts, the potential for misuse, deepfakes, and copyright chaos is exploding. Zelnick basically said that any AI use at Take-Two has to navigate these "constraints" carefully.
Reason 2: AI Is Just a Really Good Echo Chamber
But the bigger issue, according to Zelnick, goes right to the heart of creativity itself. Even if there were no legal problems, could they just hit a button and have AI spit out the next GTA? "The answer is no," he stated flatly.
Why? Because AI, by its very nature, is "backward looking". It works by crunching massive datasets of old information. It can predict things based on past patterns, which might feel new, but it's fundamentally derivative.
Zelnick argues that while this data-crunching is great for solving problems based on existing knowledge (like medical research or homework), it's utterly useless for creating the kind of groundbreaking, multi-layered worlds Rockstar is known for.
"Anything that involves backward-looking data compute, it’s really good for that," he said. "What we do at Take-Two, anything that isn’t attached to that, it’s going to be really, really bad at". He hammered this home later: "There is no creativity that can exist by definition in any AI model, because it is data-driven".
Human Creativity Still Reigns (For Now)
In an industry rapidly consolidating under giants like Microsoft and bientôt the Saudis, Zelnick is betting on human ingenuity. He emphasized Take-Two's focus on creating "permanent franchises" and praised Rockstar's "extraordinary" creativity in aiming for "perfection" with titles like GTA VI, which is expected to shatter sales records when it launches in May 2026.
So, while AI might eventually streamline some development processes, the core creative spark needed for the next big thing? Zelnick's betting that still comes from people, not algorithms. And honestly, looking at the state of AI-generated slop, I think he's probably right.