Fortnite Chapter 7 appears to be filled with AI art as Epic boss Tim Sweeney pushes against AI disclosures

Epic Games’ massively popular Fortnite Chapter 7 has launched its latest new season following the game’s colossal Zero Hour event. While the game’s new Hollywood-themed season is comprised of loads of gorgeous human-made art, the new chapter also appears to be supplemented with AI assets across its new map.

Following the release of Call of Duty: Black Ops 7, which was obviously littered with sloppy AI-generated artwork, Fortnite’s latest chapter seems to be following suit. Across the new map, many of the game’s in-universe posters follow trends of AI-generated “artwork”.

Around the game map, players can discover numerous posters for TV shows and movies starring Fortnite characters. While some—such as the Kill Bill poster and the Back to the Future keyart featuring the game’s Peely character—are hand-made, others are more obviously machine-generated.

For example, the game’s “Sauce Talk” talk show poster shows a tomato man in a suit on a Late Night Show desk. In the image, not only is the AI-smoothness evident, but the poster also shows numerous discrepancies with melting eyeballs.

One of the posters in the game that many deem to be AI-generated is a poster for the Mile High Retreat. This poster shows a Yeti’s legs draped over a hammock strung between trees. However, the legs are uneven with one foot showing five toes, and the second foot showing just four toes.

The Yeti on the left only has nine toes. While AI art tools have improved, they still struggle with fine details as well as hands and feet.

While these examples do appear to be AI-generated, one image cited as an AI piece has been debunked by an artist working on Fortnite. An image of Marty McFly in the game’s battle pass has been heavily cited as an AI piece by fans, but the artist behind the image has clarified that the image of the character himself is hand-drawn while the clocks in the background were simply found on image search and could be suspect.

“I guess someone on Reddit thinks this was AI,” the artist said on Instagram. “I think the culprit is a clock in the background. I grabbed some clocks off image search, collaged them, and halftoned them. The numbers are bad, entirely possible I grabbed an AI clock an wasn’t paying attention.” They later posted a video of the image’s ProCreate file.

However, while Marty McFly may not be AI, Epic Games is platforming IA content within the new season. Fortnite Chapter 7 has added a proven AI song as the game’s new icon emote with “LATATA” in the game’s Free Pass which has also annoyed fans. While the game used to promote smaller artists, this AI-generated song is one of thousands pumped onto music platforms by the same so-called “artist”.

The arrival of seemingly AI generated artwork comes amidst a large controversy for Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney. In recent days, the Epic Games boss has pushed against AI disclosures on storefronts such as Steam.

The so-called “artist” behind this song has thousands of tracks on Spotify and Apple Music across a large number different genres.

“The AI tag is relevant to art exhibits for authorship disclosure,” the CEO said, “and to digital content licensing marketplaces where buyers need to understand the rights situation. It makes no sense for game stores, where AI will be involved in nearly all future production.”

Sweeney, who is not a voice actor, claimed that the rise of AI-generated voice lines in games like Arc Raiders is not a detriment to performers, but a benefit. “I think there’s an even bigger opportunity for in-game voice and voice actors,” they said. “Instead of games having a few dozen or hundred lines of pre-recorded dialog, how about infinite, context-sensitive, personality-reflecting dialog based on and tuned by human voice actors?”

As for Fortnite, the fanbase for Epic Games’ battle royale game has not responded well to the arrival of alleged AI-generated artwork in the game. On the game’s subreddit, 84.7% of players have said AI “doesn’t belong in Fortnite or other video games” with only 3.7% of voters having “no issues” with the tech at the time of publication.

There is a large amount of human-made art in this season, including the image of Marty McFly that has since been proven to be real, but AI pieces are seemingly hidden amongst them to pad content.

“It’s such a bummer to see them really starting to push AI like this,” reads one of the most-upvoted comments. “Fortnite was always genuinely cool to me as an artist because stuff like loading screens, sprays, and music genuinely felt like a celebration of different artistic styles and mediums. Not to mention how cool it was that some relatively small artists got their moment on there. I guess corporate interests really do win in the end.”

As one of the biggest free-to-play games in existence, the arrival of AI-generated content in Fortnite is a massive disappointment to fans. Following the game’s beloved Simpsons mini-season, which celebrated 30-years of animated art, the massive drop down to AI-generated content is a major blow directly after the game’s biggest boom in over a year.

As a game that isn’t present on Steam, Fortnite does not have to disclose its AI-generated content. In fact, on the Epic Games Store, there are a large number of games that use AI tools that are not disclosed. While some executives may push against the need for disclosures, players should be told whether or not the content they’re buying – either with time or money – has any worth, which AI-generated content does not.

It’s made by worse by just how much artistry is on display in Fortnite. While many may not enjoy the hodgepodge of IPs clashing in a single multiplayer game, there’s amazing attention to detail when adapting characters into Epic’s game, but cut corners stand out even more when so much effort is put in elsewhere.