Can AI create next Grand Theft Auto? Take-Two Interactive CEO says no
Strauss Zelnick, CEO of video game publisher Take-Two InteractiveHe said he is not a “naysayer” when it comes to the promise of artificial intelligence. But signs that the technology is having an impact on game development and production are “still limited,” said Zelnick, who also runs the company that publishes the “Grand Theft Auto,” “NBA 2K,” “Red Dead” and “Borderlands” video game franchises.
There are two reasons for this, Zelnick told a group of tech executives at CNBC’s Technology Executive Council Summit in New York on Tuesday.
The first reason that increasingly puts AI companies at odds with Hollywood, musicians and other creative industries is intellectual property.
“We have to protect our intellectual property, but more importantly we have to take care of others,” Strauss told CNBC’s Steve Kovach in an interview at a CNBC event. “If you create intellectual property with AI, it cannot be protected.”
The data rights conflict between content owners and the AI industry has resulted in a series of licensing deals, lawsuits and ongoing criticism as AI companies continue to seek more datasets to train large language models.
But with the launch of OpenAI’s video creation app Sora last month, the debate took another turn; This app allows users to create near-realistic, short-form AI videos through prompts. This has opened the door to a new set of concerns about deepfakes and the use of not only the voices of famous actors, musicians and animated characters, but also the voices and likenesses of any person.
Strauss said that when it comes to the use of artificial intelligence at game publishers such as Take-Two, it is important that the content created not only complies with copyright laws, but also protects people’s rights. “There are restrictions,” he said.
But perhaps the biggest hurdle when it comes to using more AI in game production is at the heart of what the company believes is why it continues to be successful.
“Let’s say there were no restrictions [on AI]. “Can we push a button tomorrow and create the equivalent of a ‘Grand Theft Auto’ marketing plan?” he said. “The answer is no. A, you can’t do that yet, and B, I don’t think it will end well. “You get something that’s pretty derivative.”
Strauss said this is because AI is inherently “backward-looking” because its calculation relies on large datasets of old information.
Oftentimes, he said, what AI produces can feel new because it uses predictive models and “there are many, many, many things in life that can be predicted based on data,” and there are many things that data can solve.
While this could help solve something as complex as a cure for a disease or as simple as a biology homework assignment, Strauss said that when it comes to creating the kind of multilayered universes that Take-Two’s video games are famous for, that’s another story.
“Anything that involves calculating data backwards is really good for that, and that goes for a lot of things,” he said. “What we’re doing at Take-Two, anything that’s not related to that, is going to be really, really bad.”
Maintaining that creative edge is critical for Take-Two, one of the last remaining publicly traded video game developers in the aftermath. Microsoft Activision acquired Blizzard for $69 billion in 2023 and Electronic Arts Last month, Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund announced that it would be acquired by Silver Lake and Affinity Partners in an all-cash deal valued at $55 billion.
“We aim to create enduring franchises,” Strauss said, noting that Take-Two has 11 franchises that have sold at least five million games after launch, in addition to more than 20 popular mobile games.
The company’s biggest franchise, “Grand Theft Auto,” will launch its next iteration in May 2026 and will likely set new sales records. Strauss said that the previous game of the series, “Grand Theft Auto V”, reached $1 billion in sales in the first three days of its release in 2013.
“The creativity of the team is outstanding and [Take-Two subsidiary] “What Rockstar Games is trying to do, and has done over and over again, is to create something that approaches perfection,” Strauss said. “There is no creativity that can exist by definition in any AI model, because it is data-driven,” Strauss added.
