The basic situation is straightforward. Rockstar's last official GTA 6 footage was Trailer 2, released in May 2025. Since then, a cluster of channels and accounts have filled the gap with AI-generated video of Lucia and Jason doing things Rockstar never showed: shopping, riding scooters, robbing stores. The Vice Nation YouTube channel presents its output as AI-generated concept videos rather than real footage, but that framing does not always travel with the clips once they hit X or get written up as leaked gameplay by engagement-hungry accounts. Some of the videos racked up millions of views. On July 25, Take-Two began filing DMCA copyright strikes across YouTube and X, per Notebookcheck and VPEsports, neither of which has an official statement from the publisher to go with it.
Vice Nation was the central YouTube target, though it was not the only one, and the strikes also landed on X. There is a clear precedent from April, when the X account GTASixJoker received a cease-and-desist for posting AI images styled as GTA 6 leaks and issued a public statement on April 24: 'I sincerely apologize to Take-Two for the wrongful use of their copyrighted materials and registered trademarks.' That was one letter to one account. What landed on July 25 was a broader sweep hitting multiple channels at once, which is the part that is actually new.
The timing is not hard to read. GTA 6 launches November 19, and the period between now and release is exactly when fake footage does the most damage. Real fans can be confused about what is and is not official. Press can pick up a clip without catching the source. Rockstar's marketing in the final stretch of a release depends on controlling what the public has already seen. Take-Two is not going to resolve the AI fake problem entirely, the tools to generate convincing footage are available to anyone, but a round of mass DMCA strikes this close to launch is the kind of visible enforcement the company clearly decided was worth doing.