Epic Games is folding generative AI directly into the tool that powers many of the world's biggest video games.
The company has detailed Unreal Engine 6, the next version of its widely used game-development software. According to Video Games Chronicle, Epic plans to release UE6 in early access in late 2027, and the new version will unify Unreal Engine 5 with the Unreal Editor for Fortnite into a single platform.
The headline feature for the AI crowd is integration with two leading AI models: Anthropic's Claude and Google's Gemini. As Engadget reports, Epic is making generative AI "a big part" of upcoming versions of Unreal Engine, signaling that AI-assisted tools will sit alongside the traditional workflows developers already rely on.
Epic is framing this as a major shift rather than a minor update. The company claims, per Video Games Chronicle, that UE6 is "going to change a lot about how games are made."
Unreal Engine is the foundation beneath a huge swath of modern games — from Fortnite, Epic's own blockbuster, to titles built by outside studios. That reach is what gives the announcement weight: changes to the engine ripple outward across the industry.
The timeline also matters. With early access not arriving until late 2027, Epic is laying out a long runway, giving developers years to anticipate how AI integration and the merged toolset will reshape their pipelines.
Why it matters: because so many studios build on Unreal Engine, embedding mainstream AI models like Claude and Gemini into it could normalize generative AI as a standard part of how games get made.