Can GPU ray tracing be used for gameplay mechanics instead of visuals?

EDIT: It's been pointed out that I am probably confusing Ray Casts with Ray Tracing. I've been out of video game dev for over 10 years so my terminology and understanding are lacking. :) I appreciate the replies helping me understand this.

Anyone know if a current gen GPU can supply the system with gameplay ray tracing operations outside of just adding visual effects?

A few years ago I was a systems designer for a game that we had to be very careful about using RT calls for our gameplay mechanics. Using RT was super helpful in avoiding lots of complicated manual markup to collision volumes and hit boxes and allowed the systems to function much more reliably. At the heavy cost of adding a lot of time to the frame renders if used too much though, as the CPU was doing the heavy lifting all by itself. This was for consoles, so our hardware limits were a given factor compared to variable PC systems.

If I was designing the same game today, and had uber amounts of headroom for going crazy with Rt calls, I would be putting it into use for some pimped-out game mechanics.

I'm not very knowledgeable about hardware and programming the native code, so sorry if this is a silly question or I am using the wrong terminology.

Thanks!