Take-Two Interactive, the parent company of GTA developer Rockstar Games, has reportedly laid off its AI team, including its head of AI.
Take-Two boss Strauss Zelnick has previously plainly stated that AI is incapable of creativity of its own, but this is his strongest message yet that Take-Two’s approach to AI bucks an industry trend that has seen more and more studios pivot to AI tools, most recently at the cost of human translators and human-made in-game artwork.
“It’s truly disappointing that I have to share with you that my time with T2 – and that of my team – has come to an end,” Dicken wrote on LinkedIn (thanks Kotaku). “I will take the time in a week or so to make a more reflective post on my time with Zynga and T2, but for right now, I would appreciate your help in finding these awesome talented folks new positions,” before sharing some of the skills of his team.
“We’ve been developing cutting-edge technology to support game development now for [seven] years. These folks know how to match innovation and novel problem-solving approaches with strong product design chops to create systems that empower people throughout the development workflow.”
Before leading Take-Two’s AI efforts, Dicken ended his decade-long tenure at Zynga as senior director of applied AI. He has now established LuDic AI, a consulting service “around the best-practice use of AI technologies for games-adjacent verticals”.
As for Zelnick? “Every entertainment business that was supposed to be destroyed by new technology hasn’t been,” he said recently. “When I was a little kid, calculators came along and parents were all up in arms that now schools would not teach kids math[s] because they had access to calculators. Well, people are learning math[s] today, even though there are calculators.”
Zelnick is very much an outlier, though. Many other game companies, including Krafton, Square Enix, EA, and more, have invested heavily in the new tech.
