Take-Two CEO believes AI is incapable of creating games on par with GTA as it lacks true creativity
Artificial intelligence is not capable of creating games on the scale of Grand Theft Auto, Strauss Zelnick, Chairman and CEO of Take-Two Interactive, stated during CNBC’s Technology Executive Council Summit on Oct 28, 2025.
Head of the company that owns three major publishing labels, Rockstar Games, Zynga, and 2K (whose combined portfolio includes franchises such as BioShock, Borderlands, Civilization, Grand Theft Auto, NBA 2K, WWE 2K, Red Dead, and more), justified his statement by saying that AI works with existing data and is incapable of original ideas, in addition to potential problems with intellectual property.
“We have to protect our intellectual property, but more than that, we have to be mindful of others,” Zelnick said while explaining the IP issue. “If you create intellectual property with AI, it’s not protectable.”
Take-Two CEO also added that even if there were no constraints on AI, no one could simply push a button and create something equivalent to Grand Theft Auto because the technology is not capable of that yet, and he believed the result wouldn’t be very good, as it would end up being quite derivative.
Nevertheless, the head of Take-Two emphasized that AI is useful for analytics and workflow optimization.