The Talos Principle III writers call generative AI 'a plagiarism machine that makes people lose their jobs'

Jonas and Verena Kyratzes, the writers and narrative designers behind The Talos Principle series, have some sharp things to say about generative AI — and they don't mince words. The comments come from an upcoming Game Informer feature on The Talos Principle III, the final entry in Croteam's philosophical puzzle trilogy.

Jonas Kyratzes is careful to draw a line between what the games actually explore and what the tech industry currently calls AI. The Talos Principle has always been about consciousness and materialism — what it means for a genuinely thinking being to exist — not about LLMs or machine learning, which he says aren't the same thing as artificial general intelligence in any meaningful philosophical sense. On the claim from some generative AI CEOs that the industry has already hit the singularity, Jonas is blunt: he calls it largely ludicrous. He acknowledges the underlying technology is genuinely impressive and that machine learning has real applications worth pursuing, but argues that in a profit-driven system those applications get sidelined in favor of short-term money grabs before companies collapse. As for generative AI specifically, the Kyratzes describe it plainly as a plagiarism machine that costs people their jobs — a framing that puts them firmly in the camp of writers and creatives who see the current wave of AI tools as extractive rather than liberating.

The Talos Principle launched in 2014 and built a reputation as one of the more philosophically serious games in the puzzle genre, with Kyratzes-penned writing that drew on materialism, free will, and the ethics of consciousness. The second game, The Talos Principle 2, expanded that lens to ask how humanity applies technology — whether it liberates or destroys. That thematic thread makes the writers' skepticism about real-world AI feel consistent rather than reactive; they've been thinking through these questions in fiction for over a decade before generative AI became a mainstream culture war flashpoint.

The full interview appears in the upcoming issue of Game Informer alongside details from creative director Davor Hunski about what to expect from The Talos Principle III. No release date for the game was mentioned in the excerpt.