Sony and Take-Two bosses say AI cannot replace human creativity

“Creativity is for humans, not AI.”

That was the line from Sony Group President and CEO Hiroki Totoki during a joint talk about games and AI in New York City on Tuesday, 20 October. He was speaking alongside Take-Two Interactive boss Strauss Zelnick at the Paley International Summit. IGN

The session was organised to discuss the forces shaping the industry’s future. It turned quickly to what AI can and cannot do in entertainment.

Totoki said he encourages his people to use AI in a certain manner. That use, he said, must protect rights holders, creators and artists. GameSpot

Zelnick offered a plain-language definition. AI, he said, is a collection of datasets, compute and large language models, systems trained on vast amounts of text and other material. Datasets look backwards. Creativity at its best looks forwards.

Completely unexpected ideas do not come from algorithms, he argued. They come from creative people making surprising, original choices.

To make the point, he reached back to his time as president and chief operating officer of 20th Century Fox, now called 20th Century Studios. As a Fox executive, he said, he oversaw the release of Home Alone.

No one expected it to succeed, he said. The film went into production at Warner Bros. and was put into turnaround four days into production. It then became, in his words, the highest-grossing comedy of all time.

His message was simple. If hits are unexpected, datasets are not going to get you there.

He used a games example too. When the first Grand Theft Auto was created, he said, the team did not expect the phrase “Grand Theft Auto” to become what it is today.

None of this means developers can ignore the technology. AI itself will not replace a developer, Zelnick said. But people who do not embrace AI might be replaced by people who do.

What makes this stand out is the tone. Neither executive dismissed AI. Both described it as a tool for working people, not a substitute for them.