Take-Two lays off AI team members weeks after "embracing" generative AI

[midian182]

What just happened? Almost two months since its CEO announced that Take-Two Interactive was "actively embracing generative AI," the owner of Rockstar Games has suddenly laid off a portion of its AI team, including its Head of Artificial Intelligence.

The revelation came from Luke Dicken, who was made Take-Two's Head of AI in early 2025. He wrote in a LinkedIn post that "It's truly disappointing that I have to share with you that my time with T2 – and that of my team – has come to an end."

Kotaku writes that Dicken joined Take-Two after a decade at Zynga – Take-Two bought the company, known for social video games such as FarmVille, CityVille, and YoVille, for $12.7 billion in 2022. The publication adds that much of Take-Two's AI team appears to have been established from Zynga's existing applied AI department.

According to Dicken's LinkedIn profile, he had been the architect of Zynga's overarching Generative AI strategy before becoming Take-Two's AI boss.

Dicken never revealed why he is no longer at Take-Two or how many people from his team were also leaving the gaming giant.

The timing of the departures is somewhat surprising. It was only at the start of February when Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick jumped on the trend of publicly announcing his love of all things AI. However, in a move likely planned to reduce backlash, he emphasized that generative AI has "zero part" in GTA 6.

Zelnick's praise of AI was a response to a question about Google's Project Genie. The experimental system transforms simple text instructions into short, explorable video environments – interactive worlds, essentially.

Google's announcement of Project Genie caused Take-Two's stock price to fall to an 11-month low, a reaction that Zelnick said left him "a little confused."

Take-Two president Karl Slatoff was also dismissive of Google's tool. "Genie is early in its iteration at this point and trying to make a comparison to a game engine is just really – they're not even in the same ballpark. Genie is not a game engine," he said.

We've become used to seeing companies making huge layoffs as a result of generative AI automating tasks and making some jobs obsolete. A recent case saw Kingdom Come: Deliverance II developer Warhorse Studios axe a translator because his role was being filled by the technology.

Take-Two's decision to remove humans whose job it is to implement AI within a company is rare, but it could be the start of a trend. The backlash against Nvidia over DLSS 5 making games look like AI slop was enormous. OpenAI recently discontinued Sora. And games continue to be slammed when people even suspect the presence of AI-generated content.

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Take-Two lays off AI team members weeks after "embracing" generative AI

 

[FaTaL]

AI Team Leader: "Sir, we've finished generative AI "
Boss: "Great. I no longer have any need for you. kthx bai"

 

[ScottSoapbox]

So the guy who headed AI slop for Farmville on FB is fired?

GTA 6 may avoid slop after all.

Hilariously ironic too.

 

[winjer]

So they made and trained their own replacement.

 

[NumberNine]

I don't care if it was coded by 300 dolphins rescued from a lab on the moon, no more money for take two. No more accounts, no more data, no more time.

 

[OortCloud]

The AI backlash continues to gather momentum as businesses start to comprehend the level of dislike for AI from the public. Meanwhile the tech-bros continue their consensual hallucination that everything is fine while building more and more shuttered AI data centres with no customers to switch them on for.

 

[DontMakeThemEasy]

I guess there is left some common sense in some game studios. And others games studios can enjoy the AI brain-rot they inflict on their players.

 

[hamza302]

This feels like one of those classic “AI hype vs reality” moments. Just a few weeks ago, Take-Two was talking about embracing generative AI, and now they’re letting go of the very team that was supposed to build that future. It makes you wonder if the internal results didn’t match expectations or if priorities shifted quickly at the top.


From what I’ve read, even the head of AI and multiple team members were laid off, which suggests this wasn’t a small adjustment but a pretty major internal change:
https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/report-take-two-lays-off-the-head-of-ai-and-unknown-number-of-team-members


Also, this isn’t happening in isolation. Across the tech industry, companies are simultaneously investing in AI while cutting teams—sometimes even the same teams working on it. A recent report shows layoffs are increasingly tied to AI restructuring rather than pure automation:
https://www.businessinsider.com/recent-company-layoffs-laying-off-workers-2026


So maybe it’s less about “AI replacing jobs” and more about companies still figuring out how to actually use AI effectively. Right now, it feels like a lot of experimentation—and some of it clearly isn’t working out as planned.

 

[Endymio]

Meanwhile the tech-bros continue their consensual hallucination that everything is fine while building more and more shuttered AI data centres with no customers to switch them on for.

Sounds like a forum poster is the one having hallucinations. Out here in the real world, not one single "AI data center" is shuttered, and most of the hundreds of new ones planned are being delayed due to lack of parts or infrastructure to build them.

Oh, and the March jobs report dropped yesterday, showing triple the number of new jobs created, and unemployment dipping to 4.3% -- far below the historic norm of 5.8% we've seen since WW2. Seems fears of AI collapsing the jobs markets are hallucinations as well.

 

[Anton Longshot]

Nooo just imagine all those crushed dreams! Our precious AI future evaporating away!
And think of the lost fortunes! Billions up in smoke!

I'd cry if I could avoid thinking of affordable RAM. Ha ha.