Fortnite's AI Voiced Darth Vader Is Causing More Chaos in the Games Industry | Push Square
If you’ve played Fortnite over the past few days, you may have recruited Darth Vader to your team. Pretty cool, huh? Even cooler is that you can actually talk to him, as the game experiments with chat bot technology trained on the late actor James Earl Jones’ voice, with permission from his estate.
It didn’t take long for fans to push the functionality to its limits, forcing the Star Wars antagonist to say all kinds of horrific things. And now, voice actor union SAG-AFTRA has launched an unfair labour practice charge against developer Epic Games’ signature company Llama Productions, regarding the replacement of human actors with AI.
As Epic Games had the permission of James Earl Jones’ estate to train the model on his voice, the dispute here pertains to the potential loss of work to the many other voice actors who’ve played Darth Vader across various forms of media in the past. SAG-AFTRA members have, of course, been striking since 2024 over the existential threat AI poses to the voice acting industry.
“We celebrate the right of our members and their estates to control the use of their digital replicas and welcome the use of new technologies to allow new generations to share in the enjoyment of those legacies and renowned roles,” a statement reads.
“However, we must protect our right to bargain terms and conditions around uses of voice that replace the work of our members, including those who previously did the work of matching Darth Vader’s iconic rhythm and tone in video games.”
This effectively gets to the crux of what SAG-AFTRA has been concerned about all along: AI voices replacing the work of real actors. As has been pointed out online, Scott Lawrence has been playing Darth Vader in video games since 1994, so we can see where the union is coming from with regards to AI taking the place of human work here.
It’s going to be interesting to see where this all goes, because we’re entering unprecedented times. At the time of writing, though, Epic Games is yet to respond to the charge.
[source sagaftra.org, via arstechnica.com, thegamer.com]
As the Editor of Push Square, Sammy has over 15 years of experience analysing the world of PlayStation, from PS3 through PS5 and everything in between. He’s an expert on PS Studios and industry matters, as well as sports games and simulators. He also enjoys RPGs when he has the time to dedicate to them, and is a bit of a gacha whale.
