Take-Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick's recent appearance on CNBC's Squawk Box went viral for his thoughts on PC gaming. But elsewhere in the same interview, Zelnick might have hinted at an interesting feature coming to future Take-Two titles. He reveals that he sees AI as a tool that could help Rockstar Games and other video game developers create game characters capable of having natural, unscripted conversations with players.
He explained that characters could be trained on scripts written by talented writers, then use that foundation to create responses that feel more natural and spontaneous. Instead of picking from a list of three dialogue options, you might actually have a real conversation with that shopkeeper who looks a lot like someone else in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City in Grand Theft Auto 6.
With GTA 6 officially one year away from launch, many are wondering if this could be implemented in the upcoming sequel.
Companies like NVIDIA and Inworld AI are already demonstrating this technology. Their systems allow game characters to understand context and respond to natural speech based on what they should logically know about the game world. But not everyone is a fan of using AI in gaming.
Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 faced backlash when players discovered what they called AI-generated assets in the game. ARC Raiders drew criticism for using artificial intelligence to voice some of its characters.
Zelnick tried to address these concerns during his interview. He emphasized that AI wouldn't replace human creativity but would build upon it, using human-written scripts as a foundation for more dynamic interactions, which is similar to what he previously mentioned. Former Rockstar North lead developer Obbe Vermeij also shared similar thoughts on how AI could help streamline the development of the next Grand Theft Auto, if it even hits the development pipeline, that is.
