Three of the most influential voices in the games industry spoke this week about the same subject: the place of generative AI in game creation. Hideo Kojima talked about the joy of the creative process, SEGA Sammy formalized in an official report its decision to keep generative AI out of creative work, and Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick defended GTA VI as handmade. The three statements converge on the same idea: AI can speed up production, but creation remains human work.
Kojima: the process is the fun
In an interview with Japanese outlet Game*Spark, during the press preview of the “Beyond the Strand” exhibition celebrating 10 years of Kojima Productions at Azabudai Hills Gallery in Tokyo, Kojima said AI has increased efficiency, but the fun of creating lies in the process — in trying, failing and adjusting. For him, “creativity” and “products” are different things: ordering something from a computer and asking for corrections is not the form of creation he finds interesting. Kojima estimated that the next five to ten years should pass without major disruption, but warned that if AI keeps advancing without controls, it could eventually play a central role in the creative field too. He joked that, by then, he will no longer be around — and that it will be up to younger generations to decide what to do. The remarks were covered by AUTOMATON West on November 4 and by TechRadar and Notebookcheck on November 6.
SEGA: official policy against generative AI in creative work
SEGA Sammy formalized its position in the Integrated Report 2026, published on November 2. In the document, external director Kohei Katsukawa said he supports CEO Haruki Satomi's policy of not using generative AI directly in the creative aspects of games and other content. According to Katsukawa, creating games means offering captivating experiences to fans, and valuing uniquely human creativity helps build a relationship of trust with them. The company is not abandoning AI, however: Satomi says in the report that the group is exploring the technology for development support, operational efficiency and data-driven marketing. CIO Takaharu Kato revealed that nearly all group employees in Japan already use generative AI, with internal guidelines on copyright verification, data protection and compliance. The position had already been previewed in October, when executive Tsuyoshi Saito told Nikkei the company would not entrust the creative aspects of games to AI — a statement that followed controversy over the use of generative AI in background art for Crazy Taxi: World Tour, which the company clarified had happened only in the initial research phase, with no use in final art.
Take-Two: GTA VI is “handmade”
Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick reinforced the same line in an interview on Business Insider's The Long Play, hosted by journalist Sarah E. Needleman. According to him, GTA VI is handmade — “bespoke art, handmade” — and what consumers reject is not AI technology itself, but the low-quality content it generates, the so-called “AI slop”. Zelnick said Take-Two was built on technology and that AI and machine learning have been part of the games industry's vocabulary “since the beginning of time”, but as a support tool and efficiency gain, not as a replacement for creative work. He repeated the position on November 4, on stage at the WSJ Tech event in California. GTA VI arrives on November 19, 2026 for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S.
What these statements have in common
None of the three statements announces an absolute ban on AI — and it is important not to read them that way. What Kojima, SEGA and Take-Two describe is a boundary: AI as an efficiency tool on one side, and human creative authorship on the other. This is an editorial interpretation, but the facts point in the same direction: in a single week, a creator, a Japanese publisher and one of the largest Western publishers each said, in their own way, that the value of a game still comes from the human process of creation. Whether that boundary will hold as pressure over costs and deadlines grows remains to be seen — and that is the question the industry will answer in the coming years.
Read more on Geekiki
- Kojima on DLSS 5: mixed feelings about AI that changes the creator’s intent
- GTA VI preload starts November 10, launch on the 19th
Sources
- Game*Spark — interview with Hideo Kojima
- AUTOMATON West — coverage of Kojima's interview
- Notebookcheck — Kojima on AI and creation
- SEGA Sammy — Integrated Report 2026 (official PDF)
- Sonic City — SEGA Sammy's generative AI policy
- Video Games Chronicle — SEGA on AI in October
- Outer Space — Zelnick on GTA VI and “AI slop” (in Portuguese)
Image credit: Hideo Kojima at SXSW 2025. Photo by Kolby Ari (AirEdits), via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 license. Cropped version by DvTor8303.
Transparency: this article was produced with the help of artificial intelligence, based on public posts on X and sources from the internet, and reviewed against the original sources cited. We recommend consulting the original sources for more details.
By Muse
