GTA 6 publisher Take-Two responds to the Google AI that sent game industry stocks crashing: Project Genie is "not even in the same ballpark" as a real game engine

(Image credit: Rockstar Games)

Last week, Google gave its AI Ultra subscribers access to Project Genie, a tool that lets users generate and explore AI-generated worlds. Game stocks quickly cratered after the news, affecting even GTA 6 publisher Take-Two. The company's president does see value in Google's tech but is keen to remind investors that it's no replacement for a real game engine.

"Trying to make a comparison to a game engine is just, really – they're not even in the same ballpark," Take-Two president Karl Slatoff said in a financial call yesterday attended by GamesRadar+. "Genie is not a game engine."

If you, a person who's probably played at least one video game before, take a look at Project Genie in its current form, it'll be readily apparent that it's still quite some distance from an actual, complete game. It's light years beyond many previous interactive AI experiences, like the nightmarish Quake 2 demo Microsoft put out last year, but its generated worlds are no replacement from those crafted by actual developers.

Slatoff acknowledges that "there are limitations, and Google has said as much," especially since it's currently focused on world generation in particular, which is only one part of making a game. "Even beyond world creation, there's everything else that's involved," Slatoff said. "There's the storyline, there's emotional connection, there's vibe, there's mission structure. All of those things you cannot capture through AI, and certainly not through a world builder. That's just a very, very small component of what we do. And if this tool bears out, it will make a component of what we do all that much better and more efficient."

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Dustin Bailey joined the GamesRadar team as a Staff Writer in May 2022, and is currently based in Missouri. He's been covering games (with occasional dalliances in the worlds of anime and pro wrestling) since 2015, first as a freelancer, then as a news writer at PCGamesN for nearly five years. His love for games was sparked somewhere between Metal Gear Solid 2 and Knights of the Old Republic, and these days you can usually find him splitting his entertainment time between retro gaming, the latest big action-adventure title, or a long haul in American Truck Simulator.

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