Take-Two CEO Says AI Making GTA 6-Scale Games Is Laughable

Not even the littlest bit." That was Take-Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick's answer when The Game Business Show asked whether tools like Google's Project Genie could level the playing field and let anyone build a GTA-scale experience.

The blunt reply frames a broader argument Zelnick made during the interview: that the idea of generative AI producing games on the level of GTA VI is, in his word, "laughable." His reasoning centers on a distinction that anyone deep in the GTA modding scene already understands. "These tools may help you create assets, but that won't help you create hits," Zelnick said. "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."

That ratio is worth sitting with. Thousands of releases per year, a handful of genuine hits. AI-generated open worlds don't improve those odds. "You can create assets that might look like a big release, that might look like NBA 2K or EA Sports FC," Zelnick added. "But creating a hit of that magnitude is a completely different animal and does require human engagement and creativity."

The comments came in response to Google's Project Genie, which generates interactive worlds from a text prompt and drew enough market speculation that investors briefly framed it as an existential threat to major publishers. Zelnick said he was "stunned by the market's reaction, because the market's 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."

His skepticism puts Take-Two at odds with several peers. EA CEO Andrew Wilson has called AI "the very core of our business." Square Enix reorganized and implemented mass layoffs saying it needed to be "aggressive in applying AI." Genvid's CEO went further, claiming consumers "generally do not care" about generative AI and declaring "Gen Z loves AI slop." Dead Space creator Glen Schofield has detailed plans to use generative AI to "fix" the industry.

For the GTA community, Zelnick's position is more surgical than a blanket rejection. He has previously expressed interest in AI-powered NPCs capable of more natural conversations, and TechPowerUp reported that he confirmed GTA VI will ship with no generative AI in the final product. That separation matters practically: workflow tooling, NPC behavior experiments, and moderation pipelines are plausible near-term AI applications in the GTA ecosystem. What stays firmly in human hands is the world design, performance QA across platforms, mission scripting, and narrative coherence that make a Rockstar title what it is. No current AI toolchain strings those elements together into a hit.

GTA VI, which Kotaku reports is targeting a November launch, will be the clearest demonstration of where that line holds.