With AI advancements occupying the front page of most publications nowadays, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick answered a question during yesterday’s earnings call on the impact that AI could have on the gaming industry business. Zelnick compared ChatGPT-like technology to math calculators, that is to say, tools that will still have to be used by humans. He said game developers will take advantage of AI to improve their tools and raise the quality bar even further, but that doesn’t mean AI will create a new Grand Theft Auto rival for a Take-Two competitor.
I would like to note that AI stands for artificial intelligence, and there is no such thing as artificial intelligence. All that said, I’m really excited about what we’re seeing right now with ChatGPT and other leaps forward in artificial intelligence and machine learning. And I do think that we’ll be and others will be creating tools that will enhance our development and probably reduce some of the costs for what we have to do today. But I don’t think you’re going to see it have an effect on the overall cost structure of the business because I think it will just raise the bar.
I think any time you make things easier, we’re going to want to do more and our teams will want to do more. We are ushering in a very exciting era of new tools. And they’re going to allow our teams and our competitors’ teams to do really interesting things more efficiently. So we’re going to want to do more. We’re going to want to be even more creative. And no, AI is not going to allow someone to say, please develop the competitor to Grand Theft Auto that’s better than Grand Theft Auto, and then they will just send it out and ship it digitally, and then that will be that. People will try, but that won’t happen. [quotes via Seeking Alpha]
For the record, Grand Theft Auto 5 reached the incredible milestone of 175 million units, while all-time franchise sales are up to 395 million units. Rockstar is developing Grand Theft Auto 6, though there’s no telling yet when it will be released.
