Pro-AIPerson

Strauss Zelnick

CEO of Take-Two Interactive

The Take-Two Interactive chief behind Grand Theft Auto’s publisher. Equips staff with ChatGPT and Claude across roughly 200 internal AI projects — while insisting “artificial intelligence is an oxymoron,” that it won’t cut jobs, and that GTA 6 contains zero generative AI.

Executive

Wikipedia

In his words

Artificial intelligence is an oxymoron, there’s no such thing. Machine learning, machines don’t learn. Those are convenient ways to explain to human beings what looks like magic.

— PC Gamer, 2025

The history of digital technology is that technology increases employment, increases productivity, increases GDP and I think that’s what’s going to happen with AI. I think the videogame business will probably be on the leading, if not bleeding, edge of using AI.

— PC Gamer, 2025

Biography

Strauss Zelnick (born 1957) is an American media executive who ran BMG Entertainment and served as president of 20th Century Fox before his firm ZelnickMedia took over Take-Two Interactive — parent of Rockstar Games and 2K — in 2007. As chairman and CEO he has steered the company through the biggest launches in entertainment history, including the Grand Theft Auto series.

Digital tools, not digital minds

Zelnick is the industry’s most prominent AI deflationist who nonetheless deploys it at scale. Take-Two gives employees enterprise ChatGPT and Claude, and roughly 200 internal projects explore AI-driven productivity. But in a February 2025 GamesIndustry.biz interview he repeated a line he has used since 2023: “artificial intelligence is an oxymoron” — the tools are just digital tools, “and we’ve used digital tools forever.” He predicted AI “will help make our business more efficient and help us do better work, but it won’t reduce employment,” and told investors the company is “not either using this as an excuse to, or frankly seeing the opportunity to, reduce headcount.”

There is no creativity that can exist by definition in any AI model, because it is data-driven.

— CNBC, 2025

He draws the creative line at Rockstar’s door: Zelnick confirmed in 2026 that generative AI played zero part in Grand Theft Auto 6, whose worlds are “handcrafted… building by building, street by street, neighbourhood by neighbourhood.” The notion that AI could push-button a GTA-scale hit is, in his words, “laughable.” He has also dismissed AI-blaming tech layoffs as cover for pandemic over-hiring, and pledged Take-Two won’t train on other people’s intellectual property.