Well, that didn't take long. As part of Fortnite's ongoing Star Wars collab, Epic Games has added Darth Vader as an NPC that players can actually hold real conversations with.
"Darth Vader has touched down once again as a boss in Battle Royale, replacing Darth Vader Samurai. Be the first to recruit him and your whole team will be able to take turns talking to the Dark Lord. Just remember to press the special Darth Vader button that’ll pop up to talk to him," Epic Games announced today. "Ask him all your pressing questions about the Force, the Galactic Empire... or you know, a good strat for the last Storm circle. The Sith Lord has opinions."
Unfortunately, not all of these opinions are PG. It's only been a couple of hours since the Sith Lord was added into the game and already he's landed in a bit of hot water as players have managed to get him to curse and repeat racist slurs.
As is usually the case with AI experiments, players are attempting to push the envelope, and it didn't take long for Darth Vader to drop an F-bomb. A clip of streamer Loserfruit's interaction with Darth Vader clearly shows that AI might not be ready for the big game quite yet.
"What freaking f**king food is that Darth Vader?" LoserFruit asked Darth in one of the clips going around. "Freaking, f**king, such vulgarity does not become you," the Sith Lord responds. Although he's simply repeating LoserFruit's words, hearing Darth Vader drop the F-word is something I never thought I'd live to see.
This isn't even the worst of it. There are numerous clips of Darth Vader throwing slurs around and repeating racist phrases. I'm genuinely surprised, Disney and Lucasfilm, who hold such tight reigns over the portrayal of their IP, allowed this oversight. How can you release an AI-powered chatbot into a video game and not expect the worst of gamers?
Making it worse is the fact that it's repeated in the voice of the late James Earl Jones, whose family signed off on the project.
"James Earl felt that the voice of Darth Vader was inseparable from the story of Star Wars, and he always wanted fans of all ages to continue to experience it," the family of James Early Jones said in a statement. "We hope that this collaboration with Fortnite will allow both longtime fans of Darth Vader and newer generations to share in the enjoyment of this iconic character."
According to Epic's FAQ, the Darth Vader's responses is AI generated using Google's Gemini 2.0 Flash model, and the audio itself is generated by ElevenLabs' Flash v2.5 model.
Epic claims to have pushed a hot fix that will prevent interactions like the one above. They've also implemented controls that can allow parents or guardians to control if their child can communicate with these AI features.
Fortnite: Galactic Battle is a special limited-time Star Wars-inspired event in the battle royale game. The event introduces new content each week and will conclude on June 7, 2025 with a live, in-game narrative event in which you'll take the fight to Emperor Palpatine.