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Epic confirms AI-assisted development work on Unreal Engine and Fortnite
Epic executives outline how AI tools are used for programming, shader work and debugging while engineers retain responsibility for the result.
Epic Games has confirmed that it uses artificial intelligence tools in work related to Unreal Engine, Fortnite and Unreal Editor for Fortnite. Executive vice president Marcus Wassmer says the company applies these systems to code analysis and selected generation tasks.
Epic cites shader work, difficult-to-reproduce bugs and changes to its graphics technology as examples of areas where assistants can speed up development. The company says its engineers still set architecture, review behaviour and correct errors.
These are claims from Epic about its own process, not an independent audit of code quality. For studios that depend on Unreal Engine, reliability, maintenance and compatibility remain at least as important as the speed at which new code is produced.
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Code volume is not a useful substitute for regression tests, performance measurements, memory usage and platform support.
The important distinction is between assisting engineers on specific tasks and delegating high-impact architectural choices without sufficient review.
