AI Darth Vader curses in Fortnite, prompting Epic to rush some clean-up
From the ethics to the costs, there was a lot to wrangle over with in today's Fortnite Star Wars update. PLUS: A game journalist's chronicle of harassment against her runs afoul of YouTube
It didn’t take long for Darth Vader to say the f-word today.
Epic Games added the Star Wars villain to its world-renowned battle royale this morning, with the high-tech option for users to speak to him and listen to replies generated by artificial intelligence.
That update immediately became one of the highest-profile test cases of AI being used to voice video game characters, and raised questions about the ethics, cost and safety involved.
First, there was the cursing and other questionable comments from the fictional slaughterer of Jedi.
When one player started cursing at AI Vader, he cursed back—in the sounds of Vader’s iconic voice actor James Earl Jones.
The actor’s family had blessed the new AI version in a statement released today, saying they hoped adding AI Vader to Fortnite would “allow both longtime fans of Darth Vader and newer generations to share in the enjoyment of this iconic character.
Epic rushed to clean up Vader’s language, stating in response to the clip of Vader cursing that “[w]e pushed a hotfix immediately and this shouldn’t happen again.”
In another clip, AI-Vader appeared to say an anti-gay slur.
The official Fortnite account replied: “Darth Vader was replying to the player’s prompt around ‘carcinogens’ in this context, and we have hotfixed so he should not respond that way.”
Epic said this morning that Vader will only speak English, which might explain the content—if not the tone—of his response to another user who claimed to have asked him if he spoke Spanish.
AI Vader’s reply: “Spanish? A useful tongue for smugglers and spice-traders. Its strategic value is minimal.”
The internet today is loaded with people testing what they can make Vader say, which may be an effective a marketing tool for Epic and Fortnite, and maybe also a risk for whatever brand safety promises Epic may make to their marketing partners.
“I sense uncertainty, apprentice,” AI Vader said in another widely-shared clip on Twitter/X today, as he stood near an officially licensed Jeep in the game. “Is the Jeep Wrangler proving less inspiring than you initially believed?”
“Yes,” the player replied.
“Then I see little purpose in it, apprentice,” Vader replied, in Jones’ voice. “Maintain your focus. The Force is a far more potent ally than any Jeep Wrangler.”
The safety question
Epic said today that AI Vader is using Google's Gemini 2.0 Flash model to generate Vader’s responses. The model has configurable safety settings. “Our team built system instructions and filters to prevent responses that violate our Community Rules or could be potentially harmful to our players,” an Epic rep told me over email.
Some of the guardrails placed on AI Vader were found by a person who checked the game’s AI code and found prohibitions on romantic and sexual language, politics, negative body image, human trafficking, child exploitation and more.
Fortnite users were nevertheless finding ways to make Vader say spicy or insensitive comments. Doing that too much could result in punishment.
The Fortnite rep told me that “[i]f a player is repeatedly attempting to get Darth Vader in Fortnite to violate our settings and instructions, he will eventually leave the squad, and the player will be unable to recruit him again in that gameplay session.”
Access to the Vader AI is also turned off by default, for kids, Epic noted, and needs to be activated with the consent of a parent or guardian.
The ethics question
As for the ethics of the whole affair, Disney announced the AI effort today with a post that said that Disney, Epic and Lucasfilm worked “[i]n close consultation with the family of James Earl Jones.” The actor died in 2024.
Prior to his passing, Jones reportedly signed over the AI rights to his voice, and had worked with Ukrainian firm Respeecher in 2022 to create a younger version of his voice for a Star Wars TV show.
(In 2023, I wrote about how, with family consent, Respeecher recreated a deceased actor’s voice for an expansion to CD Projekt RED’s Cyberpunk 2077.)
The strike question
A nearly year-long strike by video game voice- and performance actors unionized through SAG-AFTRA bars new performances for new video games, but it appears that the Vader AI work does not violate that.
For one, Jones’ passing means that matters of his voice no longer involve the union, though the impact of AI on voice work is the main sticking point of ongoing negotiations.
Fortnite, which was released years before the strike began but is repeatedly updated, is also not a struck game, an Epic rep told Game File. Last August, a union rep told Kotaku that they hoped to terminate contracts with some live service games so that they would no longer be exempt.
The cost question
AI speech generation isn’t free. When a user asks an AI-voiced game character a question, the processing of a reply tends to happen remotely, via a cloud server, with a fee attached to that digital labor. Developers working on AI-voiced characters told Game File last year that that means players can run up costs for game-makers the more they ask AI characters questions.
One possible solution is to limit the times a user can ask questions. Another, to charge users.
Fortnite doesn’t appear to be doing either with AI Vader, though Gemini 2.0 Flash has a pricing page that suggests each query should be costing Epic some money.
An Epic rep declined to comment on how the economics of the arrangement have been set up.
Item 2: YouTube video chronicling harassment is initially blocked by YouTube, because it included email address of person who sent rape threat
Warning: Extremely not-safe-for-kids language in the above video.
Alyssa Mercante is a journalist whose Kotaku report on the conspiracy theories and hateful rhetoric around the video game consultancy Sweet Baby Inc. in early 2024 led to her being subjected to a year-long harassment campaign. Yesterday, she posted a video on YouTube in which she shared a sampling of the messages sent to her and videos made about her in the past year. Those material included death threats, threats of sexual violence, and examples of incessant monetized obsession.
Within hours, Mercante’s video was not viewable, blocked by a message from YouTube stating that “This video has been removed for violating YouTube's policy on harassment and bullying.”
Mercante worked at Kotaku after I left in 2021. I’m nonetheless sympathetic to her, given the hate I’ve seen directed at numerous games reporters. She told me earlier today that a YouTube message about the block stated “we think your content violated our policy on personally identifiable information.”
“It could be bc you can see the email of the person who said they’d rape me,” Mercante told me.
A check of the video and the timestamp shared by YouTube indicated that Mercante had indeed shown the email address of a person identified as Bob when she shared a note in which Bob told her he hoped for sexual violence against her and that she’d kill herself.
Reached by email, that user told Game File that they had not reported Mercante’s video and were unaware of her YouTube. Asked in a follow-up why they had sent her a message hoping she’d be sexually assaulted by Muslims, they replied, “I’m good Stephen” and later said Mercante had expressed “radical” views.
Mercante has subsequently altered her video, removing the email address and re-uploaded it.
She noted to me that the videos she showed clips of, videos of people obsessing angrily about her throughout the year in ways she is certain have furthered a stream of attacks against her, largely remain on YouTube. “Every single video in my video save for one is still available on YouTube at the time I published it,” she said.
Note: Just before publication of this article, a YouTube rep contacted Game File to say “The initial video was removed as we don’t allow the sharing of non-public personally identifiable information such as someone’s private email address. The reuploaded video with this information hidden does not violate our policies and can remain on YouTube.”
The rep said the re-uploaded video did not violate their policies.
And, they said, “We don’t allow content that targets someone with prolonged insults or slurs based on their physical traits or protected group status. We also don’t allow other harmful behaviors, like threats or doxxing.”
I asked what they made of the year-long run of hostile videos made about Mercante and how YouTube addresses year-long harassment campaigns, but have not heard back yet.
Item 3: In brief…
🎨 Bungie has admitted that its upcoming game Marathon uses artwork lifted from an outside artist without permission, blamed it on a former Bungie artist, said it is trying to make amends with the artist and is reviewing the the game’s visuals, Eurogamer reports.
📈 Take Two Interactive reported “phenomenal” recurrent consumer spending (read: microtransactions) growth for the 12 months ending March 31, 2025, with a 40% increase around NBA 2K and mid-single-digit increases in GTA Online and mobile. (Game Developer has more of the numbers.)
Growth in recurrent consumer spending is such a high priority at Take Two that it is tied to a pay incentive for the company’s top execs.
👀 Jade Raymond, veteran games producer and co-founder of PlayStation-owned Haven Studios, has left the Montreal-based team, Bloomberg reports.
No reason given. Haven is working on its debut title, the live-service heist game Fairgames. (Read my October 2022 interview with Raymond about plans for Haven.)
🤔 Fortnite is not only blocked by Apple from then iOS App store in the U.S., but now in the E.U. as well, PC Gamer reports.
Item 4: The week ahead
Wednesday, May 21
Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Stole Time (PC, console) and Monster Train 2 (PC) are released
Thursday, May 22
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tactical Takedown (PC) is released.
Friday, May 23
Onimusha 2: Samurai’s Destiny (PC, console) is released.
“I’m good Stephen” ah, ok, easy mistake to make
For a journalist writing a story about Mercante, you got her side of the story but you failed to get the other side. I always thought good journalist stay neutral and get all sides in an attempt to find what really happened.
Something you seem to have forgotten after 20 years as a writer.