James Earl Jones’s family allowed a “Fortnite” version of Darth Vader to use his voice. They probably didn’t expect it to start swearing at players.
“Fortnite” added the Darth Vader character to the game on Friday. The character uses conversational AI to respond to questions from players, “Fortnite” maker Epic Games said in a blog post. Once a player recruits Darth Vader to their team, they can use a special button to let anyone on the team ask him questions.
“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,” the post says.
But players are asking the AI-powered villain about more than just “Fortnite.” In one popular clip, Twitch streamer Loserfruit asks the AI-voiced Darth Vader what is his “freaking fucking favorite food.”
Darth Vader responds; “Freaking, fucking, such vulgarity does not become you Padme.”
“You inquire about sustenance, and yet speak like a common thug,” Vader continues in the clip.
Jones, who died in January 2024, played several iconic roles throughout his career, including the voice of Mufasa in “The Lion King” and Darth Vader in the “Star Wars” series.
In 2022, Disney partnered with the Ukrainian AI company Respeecher to create an AI version of his voice that the studio could use for future projects involving Darth Vader.
Jones’s family said in a statement that they also allowed the use of the actor’s voice in “Fortnite” because the late actor believed that the voice of Darth Vader was “inseparable from the story of Star Wars.”
“He always wanted fans of all ages to continue to experience it,” the statement says. “We hope that this collaboration with Fortnite will allow fans of Darth Vader and newer generations to share in the enjoyment of this iconic character.”
A spokesperson for Epic Games told BI that Fortnite deployed a fix to stop Darth Vader from cursing “within 30 minutes of this happening in-game, so it shouldn’t happen again.”
“While we added several specific rules and instructions as part of our guardrails to prevent Darth Vader from swearing or repeating swear words, in this instance, our filters did not catch a specific variation of an expletive,” the spokesperson said. “Our hotfix addressed this.”
Epic says that it also put several safety measures in place to avoid players having negative experiences with Darth Vader, including standard Gemini safety settings and additional instructions to stop the AI from violating Epic community guidelines.
If the game detects a player repeatedly attempting to get Darth Vader in “Fortnite” to violate Epic’s rules, Darth Vader will leave the player’s team, and they will be unable to recruit him again during that game session, the spokesperson told BI.
