Take-Two Has Reportedly Laid Off its AI Team, Including the Department Head
Rockstar and Grand Theft Auto parent company Take-Two Interactive has reportedly had another round of layoffs, but instead of what you might expect from today’s industry, where people are laid off because the studio believes a Generative AI (GenAI) tool can take over, it’s the people who are supposed to be leading the GenAI charge getting laid off.
Spotted by Kotaku (via PC Gamer), the now-former head of AI for Take-Two, Luke Dicken, shared on his personal LinkedIn page, “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’s comments seem to imply that his entire department, or at least the people who reported to him, have also been cut, but it’s unclear exactly how many former Take-Two developers have been impacted by these cuts.
“We’ve been developing cutting edge technology to support game development now for seven years,” Dicken added. “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.“
Take-Two has reportedly declined to comment on the situation, but these cuts are at the very least curious, especially when Take-Two’s chief executive officer, Strauss Zelnick, has seemingly tried to walk a line of being open to GenAI tools while also being one of the few c-suite executives out there adamant that GenAI will not be the solution to creating hit games, especially if you’re talking about creating hits on the scale of GTA.
“On the topic of AI, I’ve been enthusiastic since the beginning,” Zelnick told investors in February during a recent financial report. “This company’s products have always been built with machine learning and artificial intelligence. We’ve actually always been a leader in the space, and right now we have hundreds of pilots and implementations across our company, including within our studios. And we’re already seeing instances where generative AI tools are driving costs and time efficiencies.”
During that same briefing, though, Zelnick was clear that not only did Rockstar not use GenAI tools for Grand Theft Auto VI, it does not need to, nor should it. “That said, do I think tools by themselves create great entertainment properties? No, there’s no evidence that that’s the case and it won’t be the case in the future.”
“Specifically with regards to Grand Theft Auto 6, GenAI has zero part in what Rockstar Games is building. Their worlds are handcrafted. That’s what differentiates them. They’re built from the ground up, building by building, street by street, neighborhood by neighborhood. They’re not procedurally generated, they shouldn’t be. That’s what makes great entertainment.“
Then, just last month, Zelnick went further in an interview with The Game Business, where he laid out the clear limitations that those who have drunk the GenAI Kool-Aid seem to miss. “I think the bear case for big entertainment companies is somehow that AI tools will mean everyone can create hits, but that doesn’t stand to reason. These tools may help you create assets, but that won’t help you create hits.“
“The notion that somehow new tools would allow an individual to push a button and generate a hit and bring it to millions of consumers around the world, it’s a laughable notion. It’s just never been the case with entertainment. Right now [in music] there are programs that allow you to put out a prompt and get a professionally recorded song spit back out at you. It sounds like a song, but I defy you to listen to it more than once. It’s great to send as a greeting card to your partner on their birthday, but that’s about it.”
It’s unclear where these cuts leave Take-Two and its AI/GenAI strategy going forward, but if there’s any major publisher out there that could survive without going all-in on GenAI like other companies, it’s Take-Two, who are likely about to enjoy another decade-plus of having one of if not the best-selling game in their portfolio every year, once GTA VI is finally out, and even if it got delayed again, GTA V would probably still sell another million copies in the meantime.
And that’s just one of the major franchises that hit the top of the sales charts every year under Take-Two’s belt.
Follow Wccftech on Google to get more of our news coverage in your feeds.
First Appeared on
Source link
