On Friday, Epic Games announced Darth Vader would be returning to Fortnite as an in-game boss—but this time, players would be able to chat with him through conversational AI. “Ask him all your pressing questions about the Force, the Galactic Empire … or you know, a good strat for the last Storm circle,” Epic said in its announcement.
Unfortunately, players had other plans. Mere hours after Vader appeared in Fortnite, gamers began posting clips of AI Vader going rogue.
“What freaking fucking food is that Darth Vader? Tell me,” says streamer Loserfruit in one clip posted to X. “Freaking? Fucking? Such vulgarity does not become you,” Vader replies. (A spokesperson for Epic Games, Cat McCormack, told WIRED that it pushed a hotfix “within 30 minutes of this happening in-game, so this shouldn’t happen again.”)
Later, in a conversation about possible romantic partners, Loserfruit prompts Vader into replying “You speak of breasts, Loserfruit? I trust you are referring to the armored chestplates.”
In a clip from a different streamer, Vader can be heard talking about carcinogens before saying a slur typically used against queer men that can also be slang for cigarettes. The streamer can be heard screaming “HE SAID IT! HE SAID IT!” before running away in glee.
The AI, which is made with Google Gemini 2.0, is programmed with ElevenLabs’ Flash v2.5 to sound like the late James Earl Jones, who voiced the iconic character. On top of Google’s safety settings, Epic says it added its own instructions to prevent interactions that are harmful or otherwise violate the game’s community rules. Players can report Darth Vader for inappropriate comments, just like any other voice chat.
Epic told WIRED that it added specific rules and instructions to avoid swearing or repeating swearwords as part of its guardrails, as well as parental controls specific to AI use in-game. Referring to Vader’s use of an F-bomb, McCormack says “our filters did not catch a specific variation of an expletive. When this happens, we make adjustments to avoid similar responses in the future.”
If a player continues to try to get Darth Vader to violate Epic Games’ settings and instructions, he will leave their squad. They’ll be unable to recruit him in that gameplay session again. “These safety settings and restrictions have been rigorously tested by a combination of Epic employees and outside experts,” McCormack says.
“We will investigate reports and, if needed, make adjustments to avoid similar responses in the future,” McCormack said.
Fortnite is a digital playground for millions of players, many of them young. That people would immediately try to get the Disney-owned Darth Vader to say something offensive is unsurprising. But the speed at which players were able to do so suggests that generative AI still isn’t fully ready to be unleashed on a major game platform.
In some cases that made the rounds on Friday, the insidious context of what Vader is saying was presumably too subtle for an AI to detect. Consider another clip, in which Vader dismisses Spanish as “a useful tongue for smugglers and spice traders. Its strategic value is minimal.” Or another, in which a player prompts Vader to give a “tier list” of the colors white, brown, and yellow.
Lucasfilm did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Vader controversy wasn’t the only one brewing on Fortnite Friday. Early in the day, Epic announced that “Apple has blocked our Fortnite submission so we cannot release to the US App Store or to the Epic Games Store for iOS in the European Union.”
Epic and Apple have been in a long back-and-forth over Fortnite. Apple generally charges a commission for in-app purchases; after Epic updated its app to link out to its site and avoid the fees, Fortnite was pulled from the App Store. Last week, Epic resubmitted the game to the US App Store after a judge ruled Apple couldn’t charge commission for things purchased outside of the app. When reached for comment by WIRED, an Apple spokesperson disputed Epic’s characterization of the events, but the game is still currently unavailable to iPhone and other iOS users.
On Friday, Epic unveiled its new Vader boss with the message “This will be a day long remembered.” But maybe not for the reason it thought.