Take-Two promises Gen AI has "zero part" in Rockstar's GTA 6

4 days ago 9

Lucia Caminos in GTA 6. She is in a pool with a cocktail on the edge near her

Rockstar's highly-anticipated Grand Theft Auto 6 will not feature any Generative AI.

That's coming from Take-Two head Strauss Zelnick, who assured the GTA community that the controversial tech has "zero part in what Rockstar is building".

Zelnick was talking with Eurogamer's sister site gamesindustry.biz ahead of Take-Two's Q3 financial results, when the topic of AI came up. The company head said he has "been enthusiastic" about AI from the beginning, and Take-Two's "products have always been built with machine learning and artificial intelligence".

Zelnick called Take-Two a "leader in the space", with the company currently having "hundreds of pilots and implementations" across the board, and that includes "within our studios". He added the company has seen instances where generative AI tools are "driving costs and time efficiencies", though he does not believe these tools in isolation can "create great entertainment properties".

This is when the conversation turned to Rockstar and GTA 6, which is expected to debut on 19th November (a date Zelnick remains confident about).

"Specifically with regards to GTA 6, Generative AI has zero part in what Rockstar Games is building," Zelnick said, adding the studio's "worlds are handcrafted" and that is what sets it apart from other studios.

"They're built from the ground up, building by building, street by street, neighbourhood by neighbourhood. They're not procedurally generated, they shouldn't be," Zelnick stated. "That's what makes great entertainment."

Zelnick's words come soon after Take-Two saw its stock price plunge to an 11-month-low after Google rolled out Project Genie 3, an AI tool which allows users to generate virtual worlds in 60-second bursts from text prompts.

As Vikki reported at the weekend, several companies in addition to Take-Two - including CD Projekt, Unity and Roblox - saw between 8-20 percent wiped off the value of their companies as spooked investors seemingly went into the weekend thinking tech like this could replace the game development process.