--- title: "Take-Two CEO Slams Musk and His AI Narrative With a Brutal One-Liner" canonical_url: "https://www.gtaboom.com/zelnick-slams-musks-ai-narrative-with-a-brutal-one-liner-8455" markdown_url: "https://www.gtaboom.com/zelnick-slams-musks-ai-narrative-with-a-brutal-one-liner-8455.md" site_name: "GTA BOOM" site_url: "https://www.gtaboom.com" published_at: "2026-04-21T12:12:35Z" updated_at: "2026-04-21T12:12:36Z" section: "news" language: "en-US" primary_category_slug: "gta-news-053f" category_slugs: - "gta-news-053f" - "gta-6-news-7d1f" - "grand-theft-auto-6-588b" tags: - "GTA 6" - "Strauss Zelnick" - "Take-Two Interactive" authors: - name: "Ray Ampoloquio" url: "https://www.gtaboom.com/authors/ray-ampoloquio" hero: url: "https://media.gtaboom.com/media/images/c0/bc/zelnick-slams-musks-ai-narrative-with-a-brutal-one-liner-1.jpg" alt: "If AI is supposed to replace jobs, why is the richest AI advocate on Earth working 20-hour days?" width: 1200 height: 675 caption: "If AI is supposed to replace jobs, why is the richest AI advocate on Earth working 20-hour days?" word_count: 1181 reading_time_minutes: 6 --- > [!INFO] TL;DR Summary Strauss Zelnick used Elon Musk as his bluntest argument against AI replacing jobs, saying the world’s most AI obsessed billionaire would have automated himself first if the technology were ready for that. A few days ago, we wrote about [Strauss Zelnick](/strauss-zelnick-9901 "Strauss Zelnick") [calling Elon Musk a simulation](/take-two-ceo-calls-elon-musk-a-simulation-and-it-was-not-entirely-a-joke-441e "Take-Two CEO Calls Elon Musk a Simulation") during an interview where the [Take-Two Interactive](/take-two-interactive-eeeb "Take-Two Interactive") CEO flipped Elon Musk's own favorite philosophical argument back on him. Before anything else, though, we'd like to apologize. We didn't capture the full context of the interview the first time around, which was part of the Semafor World Economy 2026 panel in Washington, D.C., held on April 16. Zelnick went considerably further than a simulation punchline. In fact, he used Musk as a living argument for why AI is not going to take anyone's job, and what he's saying should make Musk's supporters at least pause. Here is Zelnick's full argument: > If AI were going to get rid of employment, the richest man on Earth, Elon Musk, knows a little something about AI, last time I checked. He has unlimited financial resources and he has unlimited human resources and he has, apparently, an unlimited amount of ideas. He also knows his way around AI. The man works 20 hours a day. If AI were going to take anyone's job, wouldn't it take his job? The richest guy on Earth, wouldn't that be like job number one for AI to take? This was delivered in response to a question about whether AI will replace [Rockstar Games](/rockstar-games-9c2b "Rockstar Games")' artists and those working on _Grand Theft Auto 6_. After all, if AI is the transformative, labor-replacing technology Musk has promised the world for a decade, why is he still working 24-hour days? Why has xAI's "great AI-generated game" not materialized? Why is the person with the most money, the most compute, the most access to the technology itself, still personally working harder than ever instead of letting AI handle it? Zelnick then answered his own question: > And by the way, why am I working harder than ever despite the fact that I've totally accepted AI into every part of my life? As if this wasn't enough to bury Musk and [his AI argument](/elon-musk-thinks-ai-could-let-you-make-your-own-gta-6-before-gta-6-arrives-9b70 "Elon Musk Thinks AI Can Make GTA 6"), here is what Musk has publicly predicted about AI's capabilities versus what has actually happened: Year | Musk Prediction | Deadline | What Actually Happened --- | --- | --- | --- 2011 | Humans on Mars | 2021 | Never happened; still no manned Mars missions 2015 | Full self-driving Teslas | 2018 | Still not achieved; Level 5 autonomy does not exist 2016 | Summon car "anywhere connected by land" | 2018 | Still not possible 2019 | Robotaxis on the road | 2020 | Limited pilots only; no scaled deployment 2023 | xAI will "make games great again" | No firm date | No xAI games released 2025 | xAI releases "great AI-generated game" | End of 2026 | No game exists; eight months left 2025 | AI creates game "like GTA 6" before Rockstar does | November 2026 | Not achievable; no product exists 2026 | AI will "figure what video game you'd like best" | Unspecified | Not yet possible 2026 | Grok 5 "near perfect" on Human Last Exam | Unspecified | Has not been released 2026 | AGI achieved by 2026, AI surpasses humans by 2030 | 2026 / 2030 | Currently in dispute; 2026 window closing Now look at that table. Ten specific, dated predictions about AI and adjacent technologies with zero close to happening. This is what Zelnick is pointing at. The person loudest about AI replacing jobs is the person whose own job, by his own stated metrics, should have been replaced by AI years ago. The fact that Musk is working 20-hour days in 2026 is evidence against his own thesis. For Rockstar artists working on _GTA 6_, Zelnick argues that AI is a tool. He walked through a specific example from [_Grand Theft Auto's_](/grand-theft-auto-8695 "Grand Theft Auto") own development history: > When I started in the videogame business in 1993, if you wanted to create a lawn, an artist had to create individual blades of grass otherwise it would look like concrete. Today, pre-AI, if one of my artists want to create a lawn, they press the lawn button, and AI does that on steroids. What Zelnick means is that game development has always looked to automate mundane tasks. Procedural generation for environments, motion capture for animations, and physics engines for object interaction are technologies once predicted to replace human creatives, but none of them have. Instead, they freed artists to focus on higher-value creative work. The artists who used to draw grass individually are now designing entire neighborhoods, character models, and narrative systems. The job expanded rather than disappeared. AI can handle repetitive texture generation, basic animation cleanup, and asset variations. What AI cannot do [is build the creative vision](/former-rockstar-developer-reveals-why-gta-7-will-cost-much-less-to-make-001a "AI Can Help Make GTA 7 Cheaper to Develop"), emotional pacing, cultural commentary, and narrative coherence that separates _GTA 6_ from other titles [because it's made by humans](/gta-6-might-be-the-last-aaa-game-built-entirely-by-human-hands-e049 "GTA 6 Will Be Made Entirely By Humans"). [Embed \(youtube\)](https://www.youtube.com/embed/B2JwhBlNzso) It's worth noting that Take-Two has had a rocky relationship with AI. At least, from an outsider's perspective. Take-Two [laid off its head of AI last year](/take-two-cuts-entire-ai-division-ahead-of-gta-6-launch-542a "Take-Two AI Head Layoff") amid "shifting priorities from upper management." The company has publicly moved from "AI tools might help us someday" to "[generative AI has zero part in what Rockstar Games is building](/zelnick-calls-ai-making-gta-laughable-and-hes-mostly-right-3010 "Zelnick Calls AI GTA Laughable")" over the past 18 months. That is not the direction a company moves if it believes AI is about to replace its workforce. That is the direction a company moves when it has evaluated the technology, decided it does not meet the quality bar required for a [$3 billion flagship product](/gta-6-budget-may-be-higher-than-any-movie-ever-made-9a75 "GTA 6's Budget Makes Every Hollywood Blockbuster Look Cheap"), and quietly wound down the team that was supposed to integrate it. With that said, the exchange between these two CEOS isn't really about Musk or Zelnick. It's about whether AI has lived up to expectations, and if you ask Zelnick, it hasn't. If the tool worked the way its loudest advocates say it works, the loudest advocate wouldn't be working as hard. He is, and that's the end of it. ## FAQ - **Q:** Is Zelnick arguing that AI is useless in game development? **A:** No. He describes AI as a tool for automating mundane or repetitive tasks, not as a replacement for the people behind video game development. - **Q:** Who is directly affected by this stance inside Rockstar and Take Two? **A:** The line drawn here is that repetitive asset work may be assisted by AI, while the human team still owns the creative direction, world design, narrative tone, and overall quality bar. - **Q:** Who does this not support as a use case right now? **A:** It does not support the idea that generative AI can build a GTA 6 level flagship game on its own. It also does not back the claim that Take Two is preparing to replace Rockstar’s creative workforce with AI systems. - **Q:** What concrete details back up the claim that AI is not replacing GTA 6 developers? **A:** Zelnick points to Musk still working extreme hours despite deep AI access and resources, then contrasts that with a long list of missed Musk predictions on AI and adjacent technology. > [!INFO] What to watch for 1. Track Take Two comments on artist workflows and automation, which shows the practical use of AI. 2. Keep an eye on xAI game claims from Musk. A real released product would matter more than another prediction.