Grand Theft Auto 6 hasn’t been released yet, but people are already asking about the franchise’s future. Specifically, how will AI change the development of Grand Theft Auto 7 and beyond?
During an interview this week in New York City, Take-Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick was asked about AI and its place in game development. While he’s not fully against the idea of AI, Zelnick remains skeptical about just how much it can and will help game development and general production. That includes making sure that what his company builds remains with the company.
“We have to protect our intellectual property, but more than that, we have to be mindful of others,” Strauss told CNBC. “If you create intellectual property with AI, it’s not protectable.”
When talking specifically about Grand Theft Auto, Zelnick said even if there were no constraints on how AI can be used, it wouldn’t be able to produce what the team at Rockstar has been able to do.
“Let’s say there were no constraints [on AI],” he said. “Could we push a button tomorrow and create an equivalent to the Grand Theft Auto marketing plan? 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.”
As far as why, Zelnick said that AI is “backward looking”. AI productions, he said, can “feel new” because of the predictive models, and though there are things the data it’s built on can solve for, there are still areas that it simply can’t.
“Anything that involves backward-looking data compute, it’s really good for that and that applies to lots of things,” Zelnick said. “What we do at Take-Two, anything that isn’t attached to that, it’s going to be really, really bad at.”
Grand Theft Auto 6 is currently scheduled to launch on May 26, 2026, for Xbox Series X|S and PlayStation 5.
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Mike has been covering the gaming industry since 2012, and has reported on some of the largest events in the industry while also working as an investigative reporter. Outside of…
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