Zelda Williams, daughter of late actor and comedian Robin Williams, has pleaded for people to stop sharing artificial intelligence-generated videos of her father.
Williams, who took his own life in 2014 at the age of 63, remains one of Hollywood’s most beloved performers. His daughter Zelda, 36, took to Instagram Stories on Monday (US time) to express her distress at seeing his likeness recreated through AI.
“Please, just stop sending me AI videos of Dad,” she wrote.
“Stop believing I wanna see it or that I’ll understand, I don’t and I won’t.
“If you’re just trying to troll me, I’ve seen way worse, I’ll restrict and move on.
“But please, if you’ve got any decency, just stop doing this to him and to me, to everyone even, full stop.
“It’s dumb, it’s a waste of time and energy, and believe me, it’s NOT what he’d want.”
Williams criticised the broader use of AI to mimic deceased public figures, calling the practice exploitative and dehumanising.
“To watch the legacies of real people be condensed down to ‘this vaguely looks and sounds like them so that’s enough’, just so other people can churn out horrible TikTok slop puppeteering them is maddening,” she said.
“You’re not making art, you’re making disgusting, over-processed hotdogs out of the lives of human beings, out of the history of art and music, and then shoving them down someone else’s throat hoping they’ll give you a little thumbs up and like it.
“Gross.”
Williams, who recently directed the upcoming film Lisa Frankenstein, also challenged the narrative that AI represents progress in the entertainment industry.
“For the love of EVERYTHING, stop calling it ‘the future’. AI is just badly recycling and regurgitating the past to be reconsumed,” she said.
“You are taking in the Human Centipede of content, and from the very very end of the line, all while the folks at the front laugh and laugh, consume and consume.”
Images: Shutterstock
