A Fortnite artist was forced to defend his work after fans suggested that numerous images found in the game’s fresh season were AI-generated, including a suspicious-looking poster showing a character in a hammock with an odd number of toes.
Last night, independent artist Sean Dove took on the task Instagram in response to fan claims that his Studio Ghibli-esque portrayal of Back to the Future hero Marty McFly was the product of a generation of artificial intelligence. Dove, a repeated Fortnite collaborator, showed off his hand-drawn process for drawing the image. Even though he drew the main character himself in a Ghibli style, Dove admitted that he could still inadvertently include elements of artificial intelligence in the background.
“I think someone on Reddit thinks it’s artificial intelligence,” Dove wrote. “I think the culprit is the clock in the background. I downloaded some clocks from an image search engine, collaged them, and rasterized them. The numbers are wrong, it’s entirely possible that I grabbed the AI clock and wasn’t paying attention.”
And while Dove has responded personally, Fortnite developer Epic Games has so far remained mute on the subject, as fans on Reddit create numerous threads pointing out other examples of images they believe show signs of AI generation. (IGN reached out to Epic Games for this story but did not receive comment.)
According to fans, the most scandalous thing is the game’s poster depicting a location called Mile High Retreat. The photo shows a pair of legs sticking out of a hammock, with five toes evident on one foot and four evident on the other.
Another game poster analyzed by fans features a glassy-eyed Tomatohead character as the host of Sauce Talk, a Hollywood-style chat show. There is also discussion around a a mystery Latat song that will be used in an upcoming emote. The music does not appear to come from a recognizable source, although some fans have suggested that the sound comes from a musical resource rather than something specifically created by the AI.
Amid all the confusion and lack of explanation from Epic Games itself, it’s clear that Fortnite fans want to counter the perception of the game’s operate of AI graphics. Some huge thread on Reddit tracks every example where players question whether the images were made by human hands and looks for more.
“Terrible decision,” one player wrote. “Hopefully it will be improved. As others have said, the graphics and style of this damn game are one of the main reasons we love it. Generative AI has no place in it.”
“I thought stuff like Darth Vader was cool – using artificial intelligence to achieve something that simply wouldn’t be possible without it,” another fan wrote. “But that was the only case so far that I actually thought was cool. Creating art is something that people, especially Epic, are able to do because of their money and resources.”
Of course, Epic Games is no stranger to artificial intelligence technology, having previously used generative speech technology to recreate James Earl Jones’ character Darth Vader. However, despite Disney’s rights and approval, the character’s inclusion proved controversial, especially as players quickly began to encourage Vader to say things more in line with the dim side of the Force.
Last week, Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney suggested that Valve should abandon Steam’s AI-generated content disclosure label for games because he believes the operate of AI will become so pervasive that any warnings will become unnecessary. “Why stop at using artificial intelligence?” Sweeney wrote on social media. “We could make mandatory disclosures about the brand of shampoo used by the developer. Customers deserve to know that, lol.
“It doesn’t matter anymore,” he continued. “The AI tag is appropriate for art exhibitions to reveal authorship and for digital content licensing markets where buyers need to know the rights situation. It doesn’t make sense for game stores where AI will be involved in almost all future production.”
And speaking of AI graphics, launch Fortnite at any time and you’ll be greeted by a menu screen with dozens, if not hundreds, of user-created items that operate AI graphics in their thumbnails, which Epic Games says is already pointless for police as the technology rapidly improves to the point where AI images become almost impossible to distinguish.
In fact, the whole thing simply highlighted the growing difficulties in 2025 in determining what is AI-generated and what is not.
Tom Phillips is IGN’s news editor. You can contact Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
