Take-Two Reorganizes Its AI Team While Publicly Saying It Still Backs Generative AI

Corporate AI stories in games often sound abstract until a staffing decision makes the strategy visible. That is what pushed Take-Two’s latest internal reshuffle into the Reddit news cycle. Kotaku reported on April 2, 2026 that Luke Dicken, the company’s head of AI, said on LinkedIn that his time at Take-Two and that of his team had come to an end. According to Kotaku, the group had spent years building technology intended to support game development workflows, making the move more significant than an ordinary organizational trim.

The timing is what gives the story weight. Kotaku notes that Take-Two leadership has recently continued to present generative AI as a tool the publisher is actively exploring. CEO Strauss Zelnick said the company is “actively embracing generative AI,” while also arguing that the technology will help automate more mundane work rather than replace the core craft behind a game like Grand Theft Auto. Take-Two president Karl Slatoff likewise tried to cool investor fears that tools such as Google’s Genie would suddenly make traditional game engines obsolete.

Why this reshuffle matters

Dicken said the AI team had been building “cutting edge technology” to support game development for 7 years.

Kotaku links much of the group to Zynga’s applied AI organization, which became part of Take-Two after the 2022 acquisition.

The company declined to comment, leaving open whether this is a retreat, a centralization move, or a change in execution model.

That ambiguity is the core of the story. A publisher can remain committed to AI as a direction while still deciding that one specific team structure is not the right one. But public support for the technology combined with cuts to the people implementing it naturally raises questions about priorities, timelines, and internal confidence. It also reflects how unsettled the games industry remains on this topic. Executives want efficiency gains, investors want clarity, developers worry about workflow disruption, and players have shown clear resistance when AI appears to displace craft rather than assist it.

Seen through that lens, the news is less about one executive exit and more about the unstable middle phase of AI adoption in games. Publishers are still trying to decide where generative AI fits inside production, what kinds of tools are worth funding, and which experiments can survive scrutiny from developers and audiences alike. That broader tension is why the r/pcgaming post carried real signal. Take-Two is not backing away from AI in public, but its staffing choices suggest the practical path is still being renegotiated inside the company.