{"id":585907,"date":"2026-04-04T23:17:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-04T23:17:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/585907\/"},"modified":"2026-04-04T23:17:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-04T23:17:08","slug":"take-two-lays-off-ai-team","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/585907\/","title":{"rendered":"Take-Two lays off AI team"},"content":{"rendered":"

Take-Two Interactive<\/a>, the parent company of GTA developer Rockstar Games<\/a>, has reportedly laid off its AI team, including its head of AI.<\/p>\n

Take-Two boss Strauss Zelnick has previously plainly stated<\/a> 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<\/a>, most recently at the cost of human translators<\/a> and human-made in-game artwork<\/a>.<\/p>\n

GTA 6 (Grand Theft Auto 6) – Official Trailer 2.Watch on YouTube<\/a><\/p>\n

“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 <\/a>(thanks Kotaku<\/a>). “I will take the time in a week or so to make a more reflective post on my time with Zynga<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

“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.”<\/p>\n

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”.<\/p>\n

As for Zelnick? “Every entertainment business that was supposed to be destroyed by new technology hasn’t been,” he said<\/a> 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.”<\/p>\n

Zelnick is very much an outlier, though. Many other game companies, including Krafton<\/a>, Square Enix<\/a>, EA<\/a>, and more, have invested heavily in the new tech<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Take-Two Interactive, the parent company of GTA developer Rockstar Games, has reportedly laid off its AI team, including…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":585908,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[256,254,255,64,63,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-585907","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-au","12":"tag-australia","13":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/585907","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=585907"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/585907\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/585908"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=585907"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=585907"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=585907"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}