Featured Image Credit: Ethan Miller/Getty Images / Phillip Faraone/Getty Images for The Art of Elysium
Topics: Robin Williams, Artificial Intelligence, Social Media
Joe Yates
Topics: Robin Williams, Artificial Intelligence, Social Media
Zelda Williams is pleading with fans to stop sharing 'gross' AI videos of her late dad, Robin Williams.
It have calling them disturbing.
The 36-year-old director took to her Instagram Story yesterday (October 6) to blast those on social media tagging her in AI recreations of the legendary comedian, who tragically passed away in 2014 at the age of 63.
“Please, just stop sending me AI videos of Dad,” Zelda wrote.
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"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.”
She went on to slam the growing trend that sees people harness AI to imitate real celebrities.
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Zelda continued: "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.
"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."
In a final cutting remark, the New Yorker took aim at the notion that AI represents 'the future', arguing that it’s nothing more than a system recycling and regurgitating old material for people to consume again.
She likened the process to the 'Human Centipede of content', with those at the end mindlessly taking in what’s been passed along, while the people at the front continue to 'laugh and laugh, consume and consume'.
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This isn’t the first time Zelda’s spoken out against AI recreations of her dad. During the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strikes, she criticised the technology as 'disturbing' for exploiting actors without consent.
“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 wrote at the time.
Calling AI versions of Robin 'personally disturbing', Zelda said these recreations are 'at their very best, a poor facsimile of greater people - and at their worst, a horrendous Frankensteinian monster'.