Take-Two Cuts Entire AI Division Ahead of GTA 6 Launch

Three weeks ago, Take-Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick sat in front of a camera and told The Game Business that AI making Grand Theft Auto is "laughable" while simultaneously confirming that Take-Two Interactive is "actively embracing generative AI" with "hundreds of pilots and implementations across our company." On a separate investor call, he described AI as a tool that would "drive efficiencies, reduce costs, and create the opportunity" for creators to focus on making better entertainment, which is somehow in line with what tech mogul Elon Musk previously said.

Today, Take-Two laid off its Head of AI and what appears to be his entire team, as initially spotted by Kotaku and shared by GameRoll on Twitter.

Luke Dicken, who became Take-Two's Head of AI in early 2025 after spending a decade at Zynga before Take-Two acquired the mobile company in 2022, posted on LinkedIn that his time at the company, and that of his team, has come to an end. "We've been developing cutting-edge technology to support game development now for 7 years," Dicken wrote. "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."

According to Kotaku, Take-Two declined to comment on the situation, but what Take-Two's CEO has been saying over the past couple of weeks says a lot.

In his interview with The Game Business, he argued that AI tools are useful for tasks such as asset creation and storyboarding, but cannot replace human creativity. In the investor call, he went further, saying Take-Two has hundreds of AI projects running across its studios. Both statements positioned the company as thoughtfully integrating AI into its workflow while maintaining that human artistry is irreplaceable, and then the company fired the people who were actually doing the AI work.

Our take here is that Take-Two's AI team, which was built out of Zynga's existing applied AI department, was not delivering results that justified its cost. If the AI team were primarily a Zynga legacy operation, cutting it might have more to do with cost reduction than any philosophical stance on AI. This is the most boring explanation and probably the most accurate one.

On the other hand, the layoffs may show how Take-Two has changed its approach to AI. Instead of maintaining a centralized AI team that develops tools for the entire company, Take-Two may now prefer a model where individual studios integrate AI into their own workflows using off-the-shelf tools rather than proprietary systems.

After all, if Rockstar Games, 2K, and Zynga can each use existing AI tools from third-party providers without needing a dedicated internal team to build custom solutions, the team becomes redundant even if the company's commitment to AI does not change.

Finally, we can't discount the possibility of Take-Two's public AI persona no longer matching its internal priorities. Zelnick told investors the company has "hundreds of pilots and implementations," all the while telling the press that AI tools are beneficial for the industry. Then, the company eliminated the team responsible for turning those words into reality.

The gap between what a CEO says in an interview and what a company does with its headcount is a gap the gaming industry is very familiar with, and it is not flattering.

With that said, it's most likely that the AI team's work, whatever it was, apparently did not justify its ongoing cost during a period when Take-Two is funneling enormous resources toward the Grand Theft Auto 6 launch. A company that may have spent $3 billion developing a single game and is about to fund what will be the most expensive marketing campaign in gaming history is going to scrutinize every line item that is not directly contributing to the November 19 launch.

An AI team that was building tools for "the development workflow" in general, rather than for GTA 6 specifically, is exactly the kind of cost that gets cut when the biggest product launch in entertainment history is seven months away.

It also adds to a pattern that has defined the past year at Take-Two and Rockstar. The company fired over 30 Rockstar North employees in October 2025. It appeared on the UK government's enforcement list for underpaying workers. It is the parent company of a studio whose Edinburgh office has been the subject of union disputes, political scrutiny, and now AI layoffs. Zelnick talks about "unlimited resources" and "following your passion." Yet, the people being shown the door keep piling up.

None of this will matter if GTA 6 is great and lives up to the studio's reputation. If the game launches on November 19 and delivers on its promise, nobody will be asking about the AI team that was laid off seven months earlier.

Between now and then, every personnel decision Take-Two makes will find itself scrutinized under an extremely particular microscope and the decision to eliminate the team building the company's AI future, three weeks after the CEO told the world that AI is essential to that future, is the kind of contradiction that does not go unnoticed.