Aftab Singh

"When filmmakers, industrial designers, software designers, or people in any other creative profession merely cut up and reassemble what has come before, it gives the illusion of creativity, but it is craft without art." — Ed Catmull, co-founder of Pixar Strauss Zelnick on why AI won't commoditize great video games: "You know how many mobile games get put out a year? Thousands. You know how many hits are made in a year? Zero to five. You know who makes them? We do." "In three years, you can 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."

Strauss Zelnick, the CEO behind Grand Theft Auto 6, is skeptical of AI creating new, original, hit video games: “What AI is, despite the fact that there are people in Silicon Valley who don't want you to believe this, is big data sets, lots of compute, and a large language model mushed together. Data sets by their very nature are backward-looking. Creativity by its very nature is forward-looking. Right now with AI we can more efficiently create a completely derivative property. Derivative properties don't work. Where the thread has been lost is that AI so far is really great at asset creation. But hit creation isn't asset creation. Asset creation is a necessary but insufficient condition for hit creation. I would love to say that AI will make it easier and quicker and better to make hits because who would benefit more than we? We're in that business already. We own IP that you know. Creating new IP is really really hard to do—with or without AI. Getting someone to buy a new video game is incredibly hard. Getting them to buy GTA 6? Not so hard by comparison. So it's not that I take lightly the potential benefits of new technology. It's just that when our stock goes down by 50 points because people are like: "With AI anyone can make a video game.” It's like anyone could make a video game last week. Anyone could make a video game five years ago. The technology's readily available. It's been commoditized. You know how many mobile games get put out a year? Thousands. You know how many hits are made in a year? Zero to five. You know who makes them? We do thank you very much.”