By Dexerto | Created at 2026-06-16 16:15:37 | Updated at 2026-06-20 04:28:51
3 days ago
Fortnite players are demanding AI disclaimers on skins after Epic Games published a video revealing generative AI tools sit inside its concept art pipeline.
The video, posted to the Unreal Engine YouTube channel on June 15, shows Epic’s own artists using AI as part of their concepting process. They sketch in Photoshop and Blender, run it through internal AI tools to speed things up, then go back in and fix whatever it got wrong.
The studio narrated it as a human-led process where creative control “stays in the hands of the creator,” but a significant portion of the Fortnite community still isn’t happy.
The video’s most divisive moment involved Meow Skulls, a cat character with a dedicated fanbase, used here as a demonstration of how teams swap a skin’s style using AI.
Epic’s own video describes a pipeline where artists originate an idea, hand it to AI to accelerate rendering, and then repaint whatever comes back wrong, which some observed sounds like a very elaborate way to create extra work.
A dedicated player who makes Meow Skulls merchandise in real life posted the before-and-after with the caption “they need to stop this ai bullsh*t.”
Other players called the AI-rendered version “slop of my comfort character” and argued the AI “completely f*cks up the work that already went into the rest of the render,” while adding that it was done not in service of some grand creative vision, but just to save time.
Others were less interested in this character in particular and more rattled by the implication, writing that players would now have to “live with the constant thought that your fav skin could be made with ai.”
The loudest demand crystallized in a post from X user Dahja3D, which pulled 105,500 views on the day: “i want a disclaimer on skins if ai was included in their creation.”
Epic had already stirred this particular pot with its AI-powered NPCs that respond to players in real time. Also, the Brainrot skins debate earlier this year showed players already drawing lines around what counts as real Fortnite content, and a video that invites everyone to wonder which of their favorite skins touched a generative model has handed that argument considerably more ammunition.
