Zelda Williams once again pushed back against the use of artificial intelligence to recreate her late father, Robin Williams. The filmmaker and daughter of the beloved actor and comedian addressed the issue directly in her Instagram story this week.
Featured VideoAlthough this was not the first time she condemned such recreations, her latest comments were blunt. In 2023, during the SAG-AFTRA strike, she called AI versions of her father “personally disturbing” and urged people to give living actors a chance to work and not steal creative jobs from them.
This time, she expressed frustration with both the technology and the behavior of those sending her the videos.
“Please just stop”: Zelda Williams begs fans to stop sharing AI videos of her dad
“Please, just stop sending me AI videos of Dad. Stop believing I wanna see it or that I’ll understand, I don’t and I won’t,” Zelda wrote in her Instagram Story.
Advertisement“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.”
She went further, describing the practice as exploitative. “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,” Zelda added.
“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.”
AdvertisementZelda also rejected the idea that AI recreations represented progress. “And for the love of EVERY THING, stop calling it ‘the future,’” she said. “AI is just badly recycling and regurgitating the past to be re-consumed. 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.”
Williams’ ongoing criticism of AI in entertainment
When Zelda spoke out about AI during the SAG-AFTRA strikes, she noted, “I’ve witnessed for YEARS how many people want to train these models to create/recreate actors who cannot consent, like Dad. This isn’t theoretical, it is very very real.”
AdvertisementShe added that hearing a robot speaking with her dad’s voice was deeply upsetting, but also noted that “the ramifications go far beyond my own feelings.” For her, AI threatened both the dignity of the deceased and the opportunities of living performers.
Zelda concluded that these recreations failed on multiple levels.
“Living actors deserve a chance to create characters with their choices, to voice cartoons, to put their HUMAN effort and time into the pursuit of performance. These recreations are, at their very best, a poor facsimile of greater people, but at their worst, a horrendous Frankensteinian monster, cobbled together from the worst bits of everything this industry is, instead of what it should stand for.”
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