'If AI were to take anyone's job, wouldn't it take Elon Musk's job? The richest guy on Earth?' — Take-Two CEO says AI won't get rid of jobs, but allow artists to do 'higher quality work' instead

• Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick says there are benefits to AI
• Zelnick says AI will allow Take-Two's creators to focus on more "higher quality work"
• He adds that AI is more likely to take Elon Musk's job

Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick has said that artificial intelligence (AI) won't steal artists' jobs, but that it will allow them to do "higher quality work" instead of tedious tasks.

Speaking at the Semafor World Economy 2026, Zelnick discussed the rapidly growing popularity of AI and responded to how the technology impacts quality and creativity at some of Take-Two's subsidiaries, like GTA 6 studio Rockstar Games and 2K.

"The three-part strategy of Take-Two is: be the most creative, be the most innovative, be the most efficient, and we think AI informs all three," Zelnick said. "Briefly on creativity, anything that you can do that, you know, reduces mundane work means that our creators can do more exciting work."

"So when I started in the video game business, which was, believe it or not, 1993, if you wanted to create a lawn, an artist had to create individual blades of grass; otherwise, it looked like concrete. Today, this is pre-AI, if one of my artists and I have many thousands of them wants to create a lawn, they press the lawn button, and that populates a lawn.

"So just imagine AI, you know, does that on steroids. So what does that mean? That does not mean that all my artists are now out of work. That's the mistake of some of them might be out of work, right? No, they won't be out of work. They'll be doing higher-quality work. They don't care about lawns anymore."

The CEO continued, saying that while AI "can be used for evil" purposes, people "spend too much time talking about the 'woe is me' risk," adding that if AI were going to take anyone's job, it would be Tesla boss Elon Musk.

"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," the Take-Two head said. "He has unlimited financial resources, and he has unlimited human resources, and he has, apparently, an unlimited number of ideas. He 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 job number one for AI to take? Why is he so busy? 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?"

Zelnick's comments about Musk come after the latter suggested that AI could generate its own GTA 6 in a reply on X/Twitter.

While the Take-Two boss didn't directly respond to the post, he later called the idea of AI tools creating a video game on GTA 6's scale a "laughable notion" (via The Game Business).

"These tools may help you create assets, but that won’t help you create hits," Zelnick said at the time. "...The notion that somehow new tools would allow an individual to push a button and generate a hit, market a hit, and bring it to many millions of consumers around the world — it’s a laughable notion. It’s just never been the case with entertainment."

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