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You can now chat with AI characters in Fortnite
21 Apr 2026

Epic Games, the developer of popular battle royale game Fortnite, has announced a new "conversations" tool.

The feature allows creators to build AI-powered characters that players can interact with.

Instead of creating dialogue trees for characters in their islands, the conversations tool turns a non-playable character (NPC) into an AI-powered one that is capable of unscripted chats with players.

Defining a character's persona
Functionality

With the conversations tool, creators can define a character's persona using simple prompts. This includes their thought process, knowledge base, and behavior. The tool also lets developers choose a voice that fits the character's persona.

New guidelines for developers
Guidelines

Epic has established new guidelines for developers using the conversations tool.

These include prohibitions against creating personas that provide medical or mental health guidance, impersonate a date, and circumvent Epic's safety systems.

The company is also making sure these AI characters don't become problematic by preventing them from being used as romantic partners in the game.

Conversations tool still in experimental phase
Development phase

The conversations tool is still in its experimental phase, meaning developers can't publish their experiences with AI characters until it reaches beta.

Epic Games has not provided a timeline for when this beta will launch.

The tool uses Google's Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite models to process audio inputs and generate text responses, which are then converted into voiced outputs by ElevenLabs.

Epic's vision for Fortnite and recent challenges
Expansion plans

The conversations tool is part of Epic's plan to turn Fortnite into a broader platform with many creator-created experiences.

This includes games using the official Star Wars assets.

However, the company has struggled with this transition and recently laid off over 1,000 workers due to a "downturn in Fortnite engagement" that started in 2025.