How AI Thumbnails Are Harming Fortnite’s Discovery—And Epic’s Indifference.

AI-generated thumbnails are dominating Fortnite’s user-generated Discovery feed, and Epic Games has no plans to regulate them in the near future.

The main menu of Fortnite serves as the initial experience for millions of players. Recently, this screen has become increasingly saturated with AI-created art, which can be generic or even untrustworthy. Despite pushback from the community, Epic has decided to take a laissez-faire approach.

“We don’t really care what tool you use to create your thumbnails,” stated Dan Walsh, the product management director at Epic. “What we care about is whether it complies with our guidelines.”

Key Points

Epic acknowledges that detecting AI-generated content is becoming “increasingly challenging, to the point that enforcement may soon become impractical.”

There are no plans for a crackdown, even as some AI-generated thumbnails reuse copyrighted material or appear to lack quality.

Epic does not utilize AI to create its own skins or assets, and has stated it has no intention to do so.

Photo by Oberon Copeland @veryinformed.com on Unsplash

Commitment to Human Creativity

Executive VP Saxs Persson emphasized Epic’s belief that human creativity yields the best outcomes. “We don’t see a need to use AI models for creating Fortnite outfits,” he remarked.

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