Epic Games has introduced a new feature in the Unreal Editor for Fortnite (UEFN), which will allow you to create NPCs based on generative artificial intelligence. Characters will be able to respond to players in real time, having their own voice, speaking style, and personality set by the developers.
At the State of Unreal conference, Epic demonstrated the technology’s capabilities with the example of the character Mr. Buttons, who coaxed the player to press a big red button. The character generated lines of text based on about 20 lines of prompts, responding to the player’s actions and questions.
However, the demo also revealed limitations: the dialogue was step-by-step, lacking natural conversational dynamics, and responses were delayed due to processing. The AI tried to hide this with "hmm" and "eee."
By the way, this technology has already been used before - in May, AI dialogues were generated for Darth Vader in the Galactic Battle event. Then the voice was created using ElevenLabs, and the phrases were based on the Gemini 2.0 Flash model. However, the system read obscene language from the streamer and played it back, which forced Epic to quickly fix the error.
It will be possible to create NPCs in Fortnite through the UEFN editor later this year.