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Epic Lets Fortnite Creators Test AI NPCs With Real-Time Conversations

The move signals Epic’s push to grow Fortnite into a broader creator platform under tighter safety rules.

Overview

  • Epic introduced an Experimental “conversations” tool in Unreal Editor for Fortnite that creators can test but cannot publish to live islands.
  • The system uses Google’s Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite to transcribe speech and generate replies and uses ElevenLabs to voice the characters.
  • Creators define a persona with short prompts and the NPC can talk in real time, remember actions within a session, and trigger in-game events.
  • Epic says voice models and response times are not final, it is covering model costs during testing, and there is no timeline for a beta that would allow publishing.
  • Epic updated developer rules to ban medical or mental-health advice, romantic companion roles, and attempts to bypass content controls, and it says it will not store player audio.