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Fortnite’s mega popular Simpsons event is over and season 7 is now officially live in the battle royale. The victory lap for one of the game’s biggest months in a while has been short-lived, however. No sooner did the new update go live then fans started side-eyeing some of the new sprays, music, and art in the game wondering if its AI generated. The latest slop witchhunt comes just days after Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney came out arguing against storefront disclaimers for games that use AI.
Season 7 features a new battle pass with cameos from The Bride from Kill Bill and Marty McFly from Back to the Future. In keeping with this loose ode to classic cinema, the game also now features new posters and sprays that some players think look suspiciously like they might be at least partly the work of gen AI. “Did Fortnite use AI to make this poster?” is now the question ricocheting around social media.
it’s unfair to criticize those that raise suspicion on this kind of thing.
suddenly, there are several images that have that “AI look” to them. Likely touched up and not fully generated, but there’s something mildly off about shading and lighting
and then the toes on one pic.twitter.com/cynddbBH56
— WayComet ☄️ (@WayComet) November 30, 2025
At the center of the debate is a yeti poster, a Back to the Future spray, a tomatohead talk show billboard, and a new emote song in the battle pass called “Latata.” Unlike most of the backlashes to AI we’ve seen in gaming however, this one is based more on vibes than obvious tells. There’s not yet any clear evidence that gen-AI was used and Epic Games hasn’t officially commented on the controversy yet.
But the sheer association with the slop aesthetic has already blown up into some calls to boycott the season. The debate has gotten so messy that r/FortNiteBR, which features over 1 million active users, has already created a dedicated mega thread to stop it from consuming the rest of the subreddit.
In addition to calls for commenters to stay “civil,” there’s also an informal poll asking for players’ positions on the use of AI in games. Nearly 2,000 respondents said AI has no place in any game. Only 4 percent said they had no issues with generative AI being used in gaming.
At least one of the artists whose work was involved in season 7 has come out rejecting the AI accusations. Sean Dove, a freelancer who goes by andthankyou on Instagram, responded after his Marty McFly spray became one of the witchhunt’s targets. “I guess someone on Reddit thinks this is AI,” Dove wrote. “I think the culprit is a clock in the background.” The face clock in question has incorrect numbers. The artist said he grabbed a bunch of clock images from an image search to collage them.
“It’s entirely possible I grabbed an AI clock an wasn’t paying attention,” he wrote. Dove followed up with a time-lapse image of making the spray.
It’s a perfect example of how poisoned the well has become. On the one hand you have people so suspicious of slop being forced on them that they are pointing fingers everywhere without proof. On the other hand, you have an artist potentially unknowingly introducing AI into their work simply by using random online references for household objects.
Time Sweeney rails against Steam AI rules
The cloud hanging over Fortnite in particular was made darker by recent comments from Epic’s boss. He recently argued against AI disclosures on Steam and other storefronts. “The AI tag is relevant to art exhibits for authorship disclosure, and to digital content licensing marketplaces where buyers need to understand the rights situation,” Sweeney wrote on X last week. “It makes no sense for game stores, where AI will be involved in nearly all future production.”
When another user on the platform alleged that Epic might already be using gen-AI for coding its Unreal Engine, the executive denied the claim. “I just hate to see Valve confiscate ever more opportunity from small developers by facilitating new categories cancel campaigns and review bombing,” he wrote. “Steam used to just facilitate downloads. Then they foreclosed on payments, then price competition, then crypto, now AI.”
Sweeney’s bullishness on generative AI is the spark that’s helping to fuel skepticism about its latest season. After all, if the CEO of a company tells you gen-AI will be involved in “nearly all future production” and thinks that fact shouldn’t have to be disclosed, it’s not a huge leap to wonder if that’s already having. No wonder some players just want to be done with the whole thing rather than having to become a part-time internet forensic whenever their favorite game introduces new art, music, or voices that sound slightly off.
