The AI vs human beings debate has been around for years now and in every industry, the same question is often asked – Can AI replace humans? Be it in boardrooms, creators’ studios or gaming brands, the question stays the same. And Take Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick says you can’t choose between human creativity or AI. He opened up about his overall viewpoint on AI and how it can be used to make video games but still cannot replace human creativity. Read on to know all he said.
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When asked about his overall viewpoint on AI during a podcast with David Senra, Zelnick said it is sort of like comparing two very different things. He said, ‘It would be like asking how you do feel about motherhood and Apple pie. I like both’.
He then added that he also isn’t doubtful of AI’s creative abilities but wants people to remember what AI is- ‘big data sets, lots of compute power and a large language model mushed together’.
He also said that data sets are ‘backward looking’ while creativity looks forward. In other words, creativity is informed by data.
Zelnick also mentioned in the same interview that AI can definitely create assets for games but ‘hit creation isn’t asset creation’. He added, ‘Asset creation is a necessary but insufficient condition for hit creation’. In simpler words, he is just saying that AI can help in creating games much faster but it can’t create immensely successful games all by itself.
Another point he talked about was how AI can help make clones, but clones don’t really sell. Giving an example of the most popular games, the GTA series, Zelnick said, ‘Speed isn’t the issue. The technology, prior to AI, existed to clone GTA, but it won’t be GTA. It’d be a clone of GTA; clones don’t sell. All hits are by their very nature unexpected. That’s the most important thing to take away. Things that are data-driven in their entirety can’t be unexpected, but that doesn’t mean that AI isn’t super helpful.’
So in Zelnick’s viewpoint, even though new technologies like AI are incredibly useful in creating video games really fast, you still need human creativity to get people to buy them.
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