The CEO of Rockstar’s parent company, Take-Two Interactive, doesn’t believe artificial intelligence will ever rival the creative brilliance behind Grand Theft Auto 6.
Speaking at CNBC’s Technology Executive Council Summit in New York on October 28, Strauss Zelnick dismissed concerns that AI-powered studios, such as Elon Musk’s, could threaten Rockstar’s dominance, arguing that machine-generated games lack originality.
“Let’s say there were no constraints [on AI]. Could we push a button tomorrow and create an equivalent to the Grand Theft Auto marketing plan? The answer is no,” Zelnick said. “I am of the view that you wouldn’t end up with anything very good. You end up with something pretty derivative.”
Rockstar parent company boss isn’t afraid of AI making another GTA
Zelnick explained that AI is inherently “backward-looking” since its outputs depend on existing data. While that makes it useful for scientific or analytical tasks, he said it falls short when it comes to world-building and storytelling, the foundation of Take-Two’s biggest franchises.
“Anything that involves backward-looking data compute, it’s really good for that,” he added. “What we do at Take-Two, anything that isn’t attached to that, it’s going to be really, really bad at.”
When it comes to creativity, Zelnick insisted that Rockstar’s human-led teams remain unmatched.
“The team’s creativity is extraordinary, and what Rockstar Games tries to do, and so far has done over and over again, is create something that approaches perfection,” he said. “There is no creativity that can exist by definition in any AI model, because it is data-driven.”
He also warned of the legal and ethical risks of AI, and GTA characters potentially being used by AI models, emphasizing that “we have to protect our intellectual property, but more than that, we have to be mindful of others… if you create intellectual property with AI, it’s not protectable.”
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