Fortnite Has Updated In-Game Art After Fans Discovered a Google Gemini AI Image Watermark

Fortnite has quietly replaced a piece of in-game artwork after fans spotted its original version contained a Google Gemini AI watermark.

Epic Games added the music track "Meow" by Ironmouse, Sleeping Forest & HalaCG to Fortnite last month, with the telltale Gemini watermark in the track artwork's bottom right corner. This lay mostly unnoticed until last weekend, when its wider discovery prompted something of a minor kerfuffle on social media and Reddit.

As of this morning, however, this artwork has been replaced with an alternate version (with no Gemini watermark). But after closer inspection, it's worth pointing out that the Gemini usage was present in the track list's original art that Epic Games simply incorporated in-game. Go check the track on Spotify, and the Gemini mark is there, too. In other words, the Gemini usage here is the fault of whoever made the track art initially — not Epic Games.

So, why the switcheroo? AI-generated artwork in Fortnite is a contentious subject for fans who have pointed to previous dubious examples such as an in-game poster featuring a nine-toed character in a hammock to suggest that Epic Games was resorting to poor-quality AI work rather than using human designers. A more recent, official developer video then pulled back the curtain on Epic Games' AI use, showcasing how the company experiments with AI in the conceptual phase when creating characters and in-game locations.

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All of that said, Epic Games has always shied away from strictly confirming any particular in-game art is AI generated, and has maintained at least a veneer of quality over the evergreen battle royale it continually toils to keep popular. To date, there hasn't been anything quite as egregious as Call of Duty's embarrassing and grotesque six-fingered Santa.

The fact that Epic Games has made the switch here is, if anything, a positive sign that it does not want to openly show artwork featuring obvious AI elements, such as that Gemini watermark, in Fortnite.

Meanwhile, over the weekend, Disney stated that its rumored desire to buy Epic Games was not something it was planning to act on — at least right now.