Take-Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick, while acknowledging the potential of artificial intelligence, remains cautiously optimistic about its immediate impact on game development. Speaking at CNBC’s Technology Executive Council Summit in New York on Tuesday, Zelnick, head of the company behind blockbuster franchises like “Grand Theft Auto,” “NBA 2K,” “Red Dead,” and “Borderlands,” indicated that concrete applications and benefits of AI in game production are “still limited.”
Zelnick highlighted two primary concerns. Firstly, the thorny issue of intellectual property rights looms large. He emphasized the critical need to protect Take-Two’s own IP while also respecting the rights of others. “If you create intellectual property with AI, it’s not protectable,” Zelnick asserted, raising a key point about the nascent legal landscape surrounding AI-generated content. This echoes the broader industry-wide debate regarding data rights, usage, and licensing deals between content owners and AI developers, a conflict escalating into lawsuits and increasing scrutiny.
The release of OpenAI’s Sora, a video creation app capable of generating realistic short-form videos from text prompts, has further complicated the conversation. Concerns about deepfakes and the unauthorized use of likenesses, impacting not only celebrities but also everyday individuals, have intensified, raising ethical considerations beyond copyright infringement. Zelnick stressed that any AI usage within Take-Two must not only comply with copyright laws but also safeguard individual rights, acknowledging the inherent limitations this imposes.
However, Zelnick believes the more significant obstacle lies in preserving the creative spark that fuels Take-Two’s success. He questioned whether an AI could replicate the intricate marketing strategy behind a “Grand Theft Auto” launch. “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?” he posited. “The answer is no. A, you can’t do that yet, and B, I am of the view that you wouldn’t end up with anything very good. You end up with something pretty derivative.”
Zelnick argued that AI’s reliance on historical data makes it inherently “backward-looking.” While AI excel at predictive modeling, crucial for tasks like medical research, it falls short when it comes to crafting the immersive and groundbreaking universes that define Take-Two’s games. These require innovation and pushing creative boundaries beyond what existing data suggests. The true challenge of game development isn’t just producing content, but innovating in a way that reshapes entertainment. This innovation necessitates an iterative process between vision, the technology and the people guiding the creative process.
“Anything that involves backward-looking data compute, it’s really good for that and that applies to lots of things,” he said. “What we do at Take-Two, anything that isn’t attached to that, it’s going to be really, really bad at.”
Maintaining this creative edge is vital for Take-Two, especially given the evolving landscape of the gaming industry. With Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard in 2023 for $69 billion and Electronic Arts slated to be taken private in a $55 billion deal by a consortium led by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, Silver Lake, and Affinity Partners, Take-Two stands as one of the few major publicly traded independent video game developers. This positioning places even greater pressure on them to innovate while also remaining disciplined in their approach to creative control and their IP management.
“We aim to create franchises that are permanent,” Zelnick declared, highlighting Take-Two’s impressive track record of eleven franchises exceeding five million units sold, alongside a thriving mobile gaming portfolio.
The anticipation surrounding the next installment in the “Grand Theft Auto” series, slated for release in May 2026, underscores Take-Two’s creative dominance. Zelnick pointed to the record-breaking launch of “Grand Theft Auto V,” which generated $1 billion in sales within its first three days in 2013, as a testament to the franchise’s enduring appeal and the power of meticulous game-development strategy.
“The team’s creativity is extraordinary, and what [Take-Two subsidiary] 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,” Zelnick concluded, reinforcing his belief that true innovation stems from human ingenuity, a quality he sees as indispensable to Take-Two’s continued success. In a market increasingly dependent on technological advancement, Take-Two continues to highlight the importance of the human element in game development, the innovation, expertise and creative strategy that have made them a leading force in the entertainment industry.
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