Take two Parts Ways with AI Head Amid Industry Shakeup

Some sources say that Take two Interactive has unexpectedly fired Luke Dickinson as head of artificial intelligence along with his whole AI team. Dickinson joined the company in January 2025 after working for ten years at Zynga. He revealed his departure on LinkedIn, but it's still not clear how many people were laid off or why.

It might look like a normal reshuffle at first glance, but people in the business are asking why it happened at this time. Two months before the layoffs, Take two's CEO praised the company's AI efforts in public, saying that hundreds of AI pilots and projects were going on across all of the companies.

That message seems to be contradicted by the sudden exit of the head of AI and his team. This has made many people wonder whether this means a change in strategy or just the end of a phase of AI work.

People who work in the industry say the move is part of a bigger conversation going on between the gaming and tech industries. A lot of people talk about AI as a tool that could change the way games are made, but Take two's CEO has made it clear that it can only do so much.

Sources confirm that Grand Theft Auto 6, one of the most-anticipated games from the company, is not using any creative AI at all in the development process.

Using music as an example, the CEO is said to have stressed that AI can't replace the human imagination needed to make a hit movie. Tools can make a song, but it won't have the depth or replay value of a hit made by a person. Take two is different from other companies that are going all in on AI because of this.

Some companies see AI as a quick and easy way to make assets, but Take two seems set on sticking to the slow, hand-made method that made its most famous games famous in the first place. Fans can rest easy knowing that the complex stories and large worlds in GTA 6 are being made by real people, not computers.

While these people are being let go, there is also a lot of trouble in the AI business. OpenAI stopped making the Sora video app last month, Disney pulled out of a $1 billion investment in AI, and Oracle is said to have fired around 10,000 employees. A year ago, it seemed like AI would grow indefinitely. But now it's reaching its limits in the real world, which is making businesses rethink how they spend their money. Maybe Take two isn't really giving up on AI in this case.

Instead, they're changing the rules and focusing on projects where human input is still very essential.

Fans of GTA 6 will be happy and interested in the news at the same time. There is a lot of talk in the industry about AI, but the game is being made the old-fashioned way, by hand, by a group of skilled individuals who create each world, character, and story. People say that the company spent $3 billion on the game, which shows how much they care about making good games. Fans can look forward to the strong show they've come to expect.

But the story still makes me think about how AI will work in games in the future. Will companies keep trying to automate jobs, or will imaginative people always be a big part of making hits? And for Take two, what does this change really mean for the next round of AI projects?

We won't know for sure until the time comes, but one thing is clear right now: major games are still made by people. All the talk about AI makes me wonder if any machine can really capture the magic of a game like GTA 6. Or is the touch of a human creator simply unbeatable?