Darth Vader Has Something to Say to You, Young Padawan

Fortnite has taken voice communications to a galactic new level. In the game Fortnite Battle Royale, you can do something no young padawan – or battle-hardened bounty hunter – has done before: Talk to Darth Vader. And yes, he’ll respond. In real-time. With AI.

Let that sink in like a lightsaber through a hapless storm trooper.

Vader’s in-game presence has long loomed large – previous versions featured him as a silently lethal general. But now, Epic Games is making him more than just a shadowy figure who Force-throws players across the map. With this latest update, Vader talks back.

Tap a special Darth Vader button to talk, and you can start grilling the galaxy’s most notorious villain on all your burning questions – how he felt when he first saw his son Luke as a young man, his journey to the Dark Side and what the Emperor was really like.

“The Sith Lord has opinions.”

This isn’t just any ol’ voice modulator. The Vader dialogue is powered by Google’s Gemini 2.0 Flash model for the conversational AI, while ElevenLabs’ Flash v2.5 model takes care of synthesizing that iconic voice. It’s a technological tag team worthy of a spot in the Jedi Archives.

And yes, it is that voice. Darth Vader’s deep baritone wouldn’t be the same without James Earl Jones, the legendary actor who gave the Sith Lord his unforgettably menacing bass. Though Jones has passed away, his legacy lives on through this carefully curated project, with full approval from his family.

“James Earl felt that the voice of Darth Vader was inseparable from the story of Star Wars, and he always wanted fans of all ages to continue to experience it,” said the family of James Earl Jones. “We hope that this collaboration with Fortnite will allow both longtime fans of Darth Vader and newer generations to share in the enjoyment of this iconic character.”

This makes Fortnite one of the first major platforms to bring a legendary cinematic voice back to life in an interactive, AI-driven format – raising eyebrows and possibly a few lightsabers. But Epic is clear about the boundaries of this power.

“We do not use any of your interactions with Darth Vader to train AI models.”

Nor does it store any of the voice data that players send through the feature.

“When you talk with Darth Vader, we securely send voice audio to Gemini to generate Darth Vader’s response. Your voice audio and transcriptions of it are not stored. If you report something Darth Vader says, we will only receive Darth Vader’s responses.”

Parents, beware: The Force may be strong, but so is data privacy law. Players under 13 – or below their country’s age of digital consent – will need parental approval before engaging in Sith banter. Those with Cabined Accounts will have to get account setup approval before hearing Vader’s dulcet AI tones.

Oh, and if you were hoping for Vader to understand your fluent Huttese or Twi’leki? Sorry – he’s strictly monolingual in English, for now.

So press the button, young Skywalker. Vader is waiting.