Strauss Zelnick has chimed in on the talk of using generative AI to make video games.
As reported by Dexerto, he made these statements in a recent interview with Carolyn Dailey:
Those who think you can push a button and say: ‘Create the next GTA 6 and make it bigger and better, here’s all the code and the marketing plan,’ you’re not going to get anything you can work with.
It’s a combination of massive data sets, large language models and computing – and all of that, as I said, is backward-looking. What comes out is a predictive model.
Some of the stuff we do can be predictive, but the really creative stuff can’t be. The big creative leaps forward will be generated by humans.
This is why I’m not worried about AI creating hits, because it’s built on data that already exists. It’s backward-looking. Big hits are forward-looking and therefore need to be created out of thin air. Being the most creative means not just thinking outside the box; it means there is no box.”
While Take-Two’s peers seem eager to embrace generative AI, Zelnick seems to be more standoffish on the technology. But if you were paying close attention, Zelnick’s idea of where to use the technology actually closely aligns with the ways Electronic Arts is using AI modeling technology and has disclosed to the public.
It may be that AI modeling technology will eventually find use for random generation or procedural generation in video games, as much as generative AI advocates insist that it can do much more. If there are other potential uses of the technology, such as in making CG graphics, there will certainly be a need for human hands to oversee and ensure that the models don’t make mistakes.
What will matter here is ultimately how the technology develops. There’s no guarantee that AI modeling technology will be able to do this work better than existing technology that’s already in use. But if the models can be refined to replace technology that already exists, than we may see the mass adoption that the tech industry is hoping for.
As unsavory as that may sound to some readers, there is some hope in the industry that offloading a lot of technical, non-creative work to AI models could reduce the cost of making games overall. So the possible entry of this technology into video games may not necessarily be entirely negative for the industry.
If any of these things can happen, though, we definitely won’t be seeing it in Grand Theft Auto 6, which is slated to release sometime this year. We’re certainly still looking forward to a non AI model powered Grand Theft Auto, designed for this console generation.
