Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick has said that workers should continue to be paid for their work if their efforts are then used or replicated by AI in the future, while maintaining that the "creative genius" behind the company's upcoming slate of games, which includes Borderlands 4, Mafia: The Old Company, and most notably GTA 6, is "human."
Zelnick appeared in an interview with CNBC this week to discuss the company's recent performance and massive year ahead, focusing mainly on the event that everyone's been waiting for: GTA 6. But when asked about how much of GTA 6's trailer uses AI, Zelnick explained "we've been using AI tools since the very beginning," perhaps side-stepping questions around whether generative AI, specifically, is being used. "I would say the interactive entertainment business is an innovator within what people call now AI."
"I think it's worth noting, though, the genius is human. The tools may be digital, but the creative genius is human," he continued, which is somewhat admirable compared to the way some video game execs have shrugged off the talent working under them. Zelnick was also firm that the company "believe in protecting and paying human beings, and we believe we ought to pay for their work if it's replicated by AI after their work is done."
- GTA 5 is "the standard-bearer for the industry over three generations," but GTA 6 publisher's CEO isn't taking that for granted: "We don't claim success until it occurs"
- The years-long GTA 6 debate over what happens to GTA Online has been addressed by Take-Two's CEO: "We've shown a willingness to support legacy titles when a community wants to be engaged with them"
Again, those comments are admirable, but the use of generative AI has been so controversial in the video game world and beyond because, right now, there aren't very many laws stopping people's work from being scrapped unfairly. And, well, you can't exactly trust big businesses to stand by their words. While video game actors were on strike, Amazon Games CEO Christoph Hartmann discredited workers by saying "for games, we don't really have acting."
