Fortnite's AI-generated brainrot characters are here, and I hate it

I do not like the new Fortnite Brainrot Bundle. I consider myself relatively open-minded when it comes to modern memes and 'brainrot' content, particularly by the standards of my generation. There's a craft to the Source animations of Skibidi Toilet, and its humor is rooted in the same absurdism that underpinned many of my favorite shows growing up. Likewise, as a linguist, I find it fascinating how a simple term like "six-seven" can grow into an entire cultural phenomenon, expressing a shared connection almost without the need for meaning.

I do, however, draw the line at AI-generated content, which strays from the fundamentals of human creativity in favor of a machine chewing up existing properties and spitting out a twisted amalgamation of them. So the 'Italian brainrot' multiverse, which has just made its way into Fortnite courtesy of AI-generated meme characters Ballerina Cappuccina and Tung Tung Tung Sahur, has never sat quite right with me. Fortunately for my sanity, a large proportion of the Fortnite community seem to feel the same way.

The pair, one a dancing cup of coffee and the other a smiling log with a baseball bat, are the latest additions to the battle royale game, and can now be found in the Fortnite Item Shop. The two characters' Fortnite skins are priced at 1,500 V-Bucks each. The Ballerina's Spoonerina pickaxe is 800 V-Bucks, and the other three items (the Tung Thunker pickaxe, Wrappuccina wrap, and Tung Tung Tung Wraphur wrap) are all 500 V-Bucks apiece. Buy them all at once and you'll pay 2,400 V-Bucks - that's $22.99 / £17.49 in real money.

The original memes are deeply rooted in the use of generative AI, but there's no clear indication whether the in-game models found in the Fortnite Brainrot Bundle were built by real, human developers. I have reached out to Epic Games to inquire about this, and will update the story if I receive an answer. Even if their Fortnite incarnations have been hand-crafted with love, however, it doesn't erase their gen-AI origins.

Their arrival isn't a complete shock, as it was teased with a brief appearance in a live-action trailer for Fortnite Chapter 7 Season 2. It carries an extra sting, however, in the wake of Epic Games recently raising V-Buck prices, and then subsequently laying off 1,000 employees. CEO Tim Sweeney cited a "downturn in Fortnite engagement that started in 2025" that led the company to a position of "spending significantly more than we're making."

In the wake of the layoffs, Sweeney stated his vision for the future: "Build awesome Fortnite experiences with fresh seasonal content, gameplay, story, and live events." While Tung Tung Tung Sahur and Ballerina Cappuccina were almost certainly in the pipeline (and likely already finished and waiting to launch) before any of this news broke, their arrival couldn't have come at a worse time for the perception of what those comments could mean.

A post titled "One thousand people lost their jobs for this," featuring an image of the Tung Tung Tung Sahur model performing the six-seven emote, sits among layoff news as one of the most-upvoted submissions to the Fortnite subreddit in the past month.

A new bundle celebrating these gen-AI poster children landing amid the continued reverberations of the mass layoffs isn't a good look, especially when the boss of Epic Games is promising fresh and exciting new additions to Fortnite. If Epic truly wants to get its audience back on board, this feels like exactly the wrong move.