Take-Two reportedly cuts its internal AI team amid restructuring

Take-Two Interactive has reportedly laid off its internal AI team as part of a broader restructuring. The news comes from posts by former employees, including ex-head of AI Luke Dicken and former senior director of AI development Jason Leon, who both said their time at the company had ended.

In a LinkedIn post, Dicken said the team had spent seven years building technology to support game development. Leon said shifting priorities from upper management affected his team, and several other employees also confirmed they were impacted.

Take-Two hasn’t publicly commented on the reported cuts so far.

The timing stands out because CEO Strauss Zelnick recently said the company is still using AI tools across the business. In an earlier interview, he said Take-Two had hundreds of AI pilots and implementations underway and was already seeing some savings in time and cost from generative AI tools.

At the same time, Zelnick drew a clear line between internal tools and the games themselves. He said generative AI has no role in GTA 6 and that Rockstar’s worlds are still being built by hand rather than procedurally generated.

So while Take-Two appears to be cutting one dedicated AI group, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s backing away from AI altogether. Based on Zelnick’s recent comments, the company still seems committed to using AI as a development tool, just not as a substitute for the creative work behind its biggest games.