Ex-Take-Two AI Chief Warns 2025-26 GenAI Hype Is Poisoning Game Development

1 articles · Updated · Eurogamer.net · Jun 19

Dr. Luke Dicken, who led Take-Two’s AI group until its reported April layoffs, said generative AI hype is “poisoning the well” and has already pushed LLMs into a “trough of disillusionment.”
His concern is that backlash against overblown genAI claims could taint broader AI work in games, causing studios to abandon older, practical techniques that predate ChatGPT’s 2022 breakout.
Dicken said his team, founded in 2019 at Zynga and later expanded across Take-Two after the 2022 acquisition, focused largely on non-generative AI rather than the tools now dominating industry debate.
He argued the boom has made executives more receptive to AI pitches, but often without enough nuance to distinguish useful traditional systems from the excesses surrounding LLMs and image generators.