Published on: 2025-06-11 14:00:00
is a news editor covering technology, gaming, and more. He joined The Verge in 2019 after nearly two years at Techmeme. AI Darth Vader was a huge hit in Fortnite, and now Epic plans to let creators make AI-powered NPCs for their own in-game experiences. But a senior Epic exec says that creators should expect a “learning curve” when using them — something Epic had to figure out on its own. The AI Vader that Epic made lets users talk to the character using their voice and hear an AI-generated ve
Keywords: ai epic persson says vader
Find related items on AmazonPublished on: 2025-07-05 21:09:13
In case you haven't heard, Fortnite — the megahit video game from Epic Games that's stuffed with characters from every media franchise imaginable, not to mention real celebrities — has become a cause célèbre after it introduced Darth Vader as an in-game boss. This was no ordinary homage to the "Star Wars" villain. It uses "conversational AI" to recreate the iconic voice of the late actor James Earl Jones, allowing gamers to chat with the Sith Lord and ask him pretty much any question they want.
Keywords: ai epic vader voice work
Find related items on AmazonPublished on: 2025-07-06 23:15:00
What just happened? The use of AI to recreate the voice of the late James Earl Jones for Darth Vader in Fortnite has run into more controversy. Soon after players managed to make the character swear and say racially charged slurs, actors union SAG-AFTRA has filed an unfair labor practice charge against Llama Productions, a subsidiary of Epic Games. In 2022, Jones, who passed away in 2024, gave his blessing to the artificial recreations of the Darth Vader voice, a role he had occupied for 45 yea
Keywords: ai fortnite use vader voice
Find related items on AmazonPublished on: 2025-07-06 22:36:25
Fortnite faces complaint from actors' union over AI Darth Vader 1 hour ago Share Save Liv McMahon Technology reporter Share Save Fortnite/Epic Games Actor union Sag-Aftra has filed a complaint over the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to recreate the voice of Star Wars villain Darth Vader in Fortnite. The union said Llama Productions - a subsidiary of Epic, which makes the hit video game - had chosen "to replace the work of human performers with AI technology". It has alleged the company d
Keywords: ai darth said union vader
Find related items on AmazonPublished on: 2025-07-07 10:00:25
Imagine having the ability to make Darth Vader, Star Wars‘ most eloquent villain, say whatever you want him to say. Fortnite players have been having a blast doing just that since the feature was introduced. But now there’s controversy attached to this new iteration of the iconic character—and it has nothing to do with him uttering too many f-bombs. Instead, it has to do with SAG-AFTRA’s prescribed procedure on the use of AI voices. In a post last week on Fortnite’s website announcing that play
Keywords: ai darth fortnite vader voice
Find related items on AmazonPublished on: 2025-07-07 14:20:09
SAG-AFTRA, the labor union representing performers in film, television and interactive media, has submitted an Unfair Labor Practice (ULP) filing against Epic Games for using an AI-generated version of Darth Vader's voice in the current season of Fortnite. Disney and Epic first announced on May 16 that Fortnite would feature a take on the character using an AI-generated version of James Earl Jones' voice. The issue in SAG-AFTRA's eyes is that the union is currently on strike while it negotiates
Keywords: ai darth epic sag vader
Find related items on AmazonPublished on: 2025-07-09 03:41:23
On Friday, Epic Games announced Darth Vader would be returning to Fortnite as an in-game boss—but this time, players would be able to chat with him through conversational AI. “Ask him all your pressing questions about the Force, the Galactic Empire ... or you know, a good strat for the last Storm circle,” Epic said in its announcement. Unfortunately, players had other plans. Mere hours after Vader appeared in Fortnite, gamers began posting clips of AI Vader going rogue. “What freaking fucking
Keywords: app epic fortnite game vader
Find related items on AmazonPublished on: 2025-07-09 20:30:00
It didn't take long after Epic Games unleashed famous Star Wars Sith lord Darth Vader into the game Fortnite -- complete with the AI-enabled voice of late actor James Earl Jones for conversations with players -- for Vader to drop the F-bomb. As seen on multiple social-media videos, Vader can be prompted to say lots of things you wouldn't find in a Star Wars script, such as curse words, "Skibidi toilet" and to share his thoughts on breasts. A representative from Epic Games pointed to a post on
Keywords: ai epic star vader voice
Find related items on AmazonPublished on: 2025-07-10 14:20:30
Fortnite‘s massive Star Wars seasonal event, Fortnite: Galactic Battle, is currently underway. In it, players can get skins for beloved characters like Poe Dameron, Emperor Palpatine, and Darth Jar Jar Binks and battle on land and in the sky with lightsabers and TIE fighters. One new thing that’s a bit more in the uncomfy category of the game’s merriment is that Epic Games and Disney announced today that players will also be able to chat with Darth Vader, despite his legendary voice actor, James
Keywords: ai darth fortnite vader voice
Find related items on AmazonPublished on: 2025-07-10 14:40:22
is a reporter focusing on film, TV, and pop culture. Before The Verge, he wrote about comic books, labor, race, and more at io9 and Gizmodo for almost five years. When Fortnite players meet Darth Vader in the game’s ongoing Star Wars event, they will be able to speak with the Sith Lord directly, and he’s going to respond with a voice that sounds exactly like James Earl Jones. Though Darth Vader has previously appeared as an NPC (and a battle pass skin) in Fortnite, Epic Games announced today t
Keywords: epic jones players vader voice
Find related items on AmazonPublished on: 2025-07-15 20:00:00
The pair of climate researchers from the Desert Research Institute (DRI) in Reno, Nevada, skied down to this research plot in the middle of the resort to test out a new way to take the temperature of the Sierra Nevada snowpack. They were equipped with an experimental infrared device that can take readings as it’s lowered down a hole in the snow to the ground. The Sierra’s frozen reservoir provides about a third of California’s water and most of what comes out of the faucets, shower heads, and s
Keywords: lake nevada snow snowpack water
Find related items on AmazonPublished on: 2025-07-21 10:06:25
Ricardo Prada Vásquez, a Venezuelan man whose family says he was “disappeared” and who wasn’t included on a previously leaked government list of people sent to a notorious mega prison in El Salvador, was included on a private airline’s flight manifest to the country, according to hacked airline data obtained and analyzed by 404 Media. That means a private charter flight company might have more accurate information on where people are being deported than the government, experts say, and raises q
Keywords: 404 el government people salvador
Find related items on AmazonPublished on: 2025-08-12 00:50:28
The final season of Andor will lead directly to Rogue One, and that’s had people talking about possible cameos to tie them together. If you’ve been hoping to see either Darth Vader or Palpatine in this show, you should look elsewhere. In a recent Rolling Stone interview, creator Tony Gilroy was asked about why neither of the two villains pop up in the show. Stories set during the Original Trilogy typically get them involved: Vader famously appeared in Rogue One—which Gilroy co-wrote—and Sheev’s
Keywords: andor gilroy palpatine rogue vader
Find related items on AmazonPublished on: 2025-09-07 06:45:39
There was one big reason Anakin Skywalker became Darth Vader. He hoped that by turning to the Dark Side, he’d be able to tap into powers that would bring back his wife, Padmé Amidala. It, of course, quickly went beyond that as his mentor Emperor Palpatine kept seeding him with doubt and hatred toward the Jedi and the galaxy—but, brass tacks, it was for Padmé. That quest will continue in a new book called Star Wars: Master of Evil by Adam Christopher. The Shadow of the Sith author has written a
Keywords: darth like star vader wars
Find related items on AmazonPublished on: 2025-09-14 21:52:18
On March 27, 2022, on the heels of a weekend marked by dozens of gang-related murders, El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele and his legislature plunged the country into a régimen de excepción — a state of exception — and declared war against the gangs. The state of exception suspended fundamental rights like freedom of assembly and association, the right to legal representation, and the right to see a judge within 72 hours of detention. The age of criminal responsibility was lowered to 12. The
Keywords: bukele el salvador says trump
Find related items on AmazonPublished on: 2025-09-17 06:00:19
ZDNET's key takeaways Mullvad VPN has a unique fixed-pricing system for short- and long-term subscribers. The VPN is optimized to provide strong protection and achieves top speeds ideal for high-bandwidth browsing and streaming. Mullvad lacks native apps for some devices, has a small server count, and limits simultaneous connections. View now at Mullvad Mullvad is a VPN service by the Swedish company Amagicom AB. It's primarily known for its solid privacy and also for pioneering some of the m
Keywords: like mullvad retention servers vpn
Find related items on AmazonPublished on: 2025-09-22 09:56:17
Turn-Taking is a big challenge AI Voice Agents are rapidly evolving, powering critical use-cases such as customer support automation, virtual assistants, gaming, and remote collaboration platforms. For these voice-driven interactions to feel natural and practical, the underlying audio pipeline must be resilient to noise, responsive, and accurate—especially in real-time scenarios. In a typical deployment, audio streams originate from diverse endpoints like mobile applications, web browsers, or
Keywords: audio bvc krisp vad voice
Find related items on AmazonPublished on: 2025-10-11 23:12:00
What is the best internet provider in Nevada? CNET recommends Cox as the best internet service provider in Nevada, thanks to its fast speeds and wide-reaching coverage across Las Vegas and surrounding areas. As the primary cable internet provider in the region, Cox delivers a range of internet plans with speeds up to 1,000Mbps, reaching nearly two-thirds of households across the state. Cox isn’t the fastest ISP in Nevada; that title goes to AT&T Fiber, which offers speeds up to 5,000Mbps in Re
Keywords: fiber internet nevada service speeds
Find related items on AmazonPublished on: 2025-10-22 00:42:15
As the United States struggles to get even basic crypto legislation off the starting line, one small nation went all in on blockchain — and it's going about as well as you'd expect. That country is El Salvador, home to the native Pipil people of Cuscatlán, ancient mangrove forests, and for four wild years, the crypto industry. Following the whims of conservative populist Nayib Bukele — who calls himself "the world's coolest dictator" — El Salvador's congress signed legislation to become the fi
Keywords: bitcoin crypto el government salvador
Find related items on AmazonPublished on: 2025-10-24 04:30:25
The Star Wars community was rocked last month with the news of the seemingly inevitable death of Watto, the Toydarian junk dealer and former slave owner of Anakin Skywalker. But now the moment is upon us, and as with all good stories, things are a little more interesting than they first seemed. The second issue of Legacy of Vader, out this week from writer Charles Soule, artists Luke Ross and Nolan Woodard, and letterist Joe Caramagna, takes a young Kylo Ren to Tatooine on the first stop of his
Keywords: legacy ren story vader watto
Find related items on AmazonGo K’awiil is a project by nerdhub.co that curates technology news from a variety of trusted sources. We built this site because, although news aggregation is incredibly useful, many platforms are cluttered with intrusive ads and heavy JavaScript that can make mobile browsing a hassle. By hand-selecting our favorite tech news outlets, we’ve created a cleaner, more mobile-friendly experience.
Your privacy is important to us. Go K’awiil does not use analytics tools such as Facebook Pixel or Google Analytics. The only tracking occurs through affiliate links to amazon.com, which are tagged with our Amazon affiliate code, helping us earn a small commission.
We are not currently offering ad space. However, if you’re interested in advertising with us, please get in touch at [email protected] and we’ll be happy to review your submission.