Creative GenerationAugments Human LaborVerified

Reviewed and published by trentmaziarz, March 18, 2026. Discovered and drafted by our automated research pipeline.

Epic is giving Fortnite's creator community a toolset — called the Persona Device — to build their own AI-powered characters that can hold real conversations with players. Rather than scripting every line of dialogue, creators write a short personality description and select a voice style; the AI handles the rest live during gameplay. The tool was announced at Epic's State of Unreal keynote in June 2025.

Details

The Persona Device lets creators define an NPC's personality in roughly 20 lines of prompt text, choose a voice type and delivery style, and deploy characters that generate unscripted responses in real time. According to Epic's official developer documentation, the device manages conversations using a large language model session, and the Darth Vader NPC described in Practice 2 was built on the same underlying technology stack, with an AI voice synthesis layer on top. Epic announced wider creator access for later in 2025. The tool represents a shift from traditional scripted game dialogue — where writers pre-author every line — toward AI-generated conversation that adapts dynamically to each player interaction.

Products affected

FortniteUnreal Editor for Fortnite

Sources & Evidence

News Article

Fortnite creators can soon build their own AI-driven characters

Dataconomy·Jun 2025

https://dataconomy.com/2025/06/04/fortnite-creators-can-soon-build-their-own-ai-driven-characters/

Company Disclosure

Company DisclosureVerified

All the big news and announcements from the State of Unreal 2025

Unreal Engine·Jun 2025

https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/news/all-the-big-news-and-announcements-from-the-state-of-unreal-2025

Company DisclosureVerified

State of Unreal 2025 - Highlights for Fortnite Creators

Fortnite·Jun 2025

https://www.fortnite.com/news/state-of-unreal-2025-highlights-for-fortnite-creators?lang=en-US

Cite this record

Trace Foundation. (2026). Epic Games: Epic is giving Fortnite's creator community a toolset — called the Persona Device — to build their own AI-powered characters that can hold real conversations with players. Rather than scripting every line of dialogue, creators write a short personality description and select a voice style; the AI handles the rest live during gameplay. The tool was announced at Epic's State of Unreal keynote in June 2025 (data as of 2026-03-18) [Data set record]. AI Trace. https://www.aitrace.org/r/practice/80bee2e2-7396-47e6-91a2-dc3c6b366984. Accessed October 13, 2026.

Stable link: https://www.aitrace.org/r/practice/80bee2e2-7396-47e6-91a2-dc3c6b366984
Data as of: March 18, 2026
Last verified: March 18, 2026

How to cite AI Trace

Other practices by Epic Games

OtherAfter widespread protests from artists in December 2022, Epic's portfolio platform ArtStation introduced a "NoAI" label that artists can apply to their work to signal they do not want it used in AI training datasets. Epic also updated its terms of service to commit that it will not use or license any ArtStation content — labeled or not — for AI training purposes.OtherEpic provides a plugin for Unreal Engine 5 that lets game developers train AI-controlled characters and agents by having them learn through trial and error — similar to how a person gets better at a task by practicing. The tool, called Learning Agents, launched as an experimental feature with Unreal Engine 5.3 in September 2023 and is aimed at developers, not players.OtherUnreal Engine 5 supports NVIDIA's DLSS technology, which uses AI to make games run more smoothly on compatible graphics cards by generating additional frames and sharpening images — without the full processing cost of rendering everything natively. Epic has also integrated NVIDIA's ACE tools, which give developers AI-powered options for animating digital human faces and generating NPC speech.

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