Porsche Fortnite collab concept art is clearly AI, and for some odd reason it even added the Riot Games logo

May 26, 9:05am PDT: Epic Games has clarified to PCGamesN that the artwork was supplied by Porsche, and that the imagery was not used in Fortnite or the configurator, but was purely created to illustrate the configurator concept.

Hey, it’s me, the guy that yammers on about how awful gen AI art is all the time. Well, I’m back, and this time Porsche has fallen foul of the controversial practice. Recently, Porsche teamed up with Epic Games to bring a Fortnite-themed background to its on-site car configurator, which runs on Unreal Engine. It’s actually a pretty fun collab, and it certainly isn’t the first gaming crossover Porsche has been a part of. There’s just one teeny tiny issue though: the concept art is clearly AI-generated.

The Unreal Engine X account shared a breakdown of the process, which in itself is a neat peek behind the curtain of what development using the engine for Fortnite looks like. Seeing the battle royale game, or any game for that matter, featured on a legacy car maker’s page is cool as heck. It’s all very pretty, but there’s an elephant in the room.

The crisp lighting of Lumen and rendering oomph of Nanite have, unfortunately, been eclipsed by the spurious concept art offered up by the Porsche team. Below, you can clearly see that the Porsche logo has taken a proper beating. Its copy is all over the place, and its iconic pony looks like it’s taken a premature trip to the glue factory.

Bizarrely, the concept shot also features League of Legends maker Riot Games’ logo. On the hot air balloon, you can clearly see the MOBA game studio’s clenched fist. I’m going to go out on a limb and say this is some sort of leftover ghost in the machine from Porsche’s recent collaboration with Wild Rift, which saw it bring skins based on the sporty 911 GT3, as well as an in-game event, to LoL’s mobile sibling. Regardless, it’s never advisable to feature Coca-Cola in a Pepsi ad.

“We rely on an established workflow for creating and implementing backgrounds in Unreal Engine,” the post accompanying the image reads. “After we aligned on the overall concept, within a few weeks, we could finish and implement the new background.” Fortunately, everything looks to be far more human on the website itself, so thankfully it seems AI has only been used during conceptualization… only.

Porsche has really expanded its digital footprint in recent years, particularly within gaming. Alongside the aforementioned Wild Rift collab, this year’s already brought with it the Cayenne Turbo GT to Resident Evil Requiem, and the 918 Spyder to Neverness to Everness. In 2024, Blizzard added Porsche-themed skins to Overwatch, as part of a team-up that culminated with a D.Va-liveried Macan pulling up at Gamescom 2024. I still fondly remember 2000’s Need for Speed: Porsche Unleashed, so to see a major gaming advocate utilizing gen AI is more than a little disappointing.