Zelda Williams has had enough of artificial intelligence recreations of her late father, and she’s making her feelings crystal clear to anyone who will listen.
The filmmaker, whose legendary comedian father Robin Williams passed away in 2014, recently used her Instagram story to deliver a passionate plea for people to cease sending her AI-generated content featuring the beloved actor’s likeness and voice.
“Please, just stop sending me AI videos of Dad,” Zelda wrote in her emotional post. “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.”
Her frustration extends beyond personal discomfort to broader concerns about how AI technology reduces complex human beings to shallow digital puppets. She expressed particular disgust with how these technologies strip away the authentic essence of real people and their artistic contributions.
“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 continued. “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.”
Zelda’s criticism grew even sharper when addressing claims that AI represents progress or innovation. She firmly rejected the notion that these technologies represent any kind of advancement, instead characterizing them as derivative and exploitative.
“And for the love of EVERY THING, stop calling it ‘the future,'” 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.”
This isn’t the first time the director has spoken out against AI recreations of her father. During the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike, when the union identified AI recreations as a critical bargaining issue, Zelda shared her personal experience with the technology’s misuse.
“I am not an impartial voice in SAG’s fight against AI,” she wrote at the time. “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.”
She emphasized how AI technology undermines the human element that makes performance meaningful.
“I’ve already heard AI used to get his ‘voice’ to say whatever people want and while I find it personally disturbing, the ramifications go far beyond my own feelings,” she continued. “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.”
Zelda’s ongoing advocacy highlights the deeply personal toll that AI recreations can take on families of deceased performers.