Robin Williams' daughter Zelda calls out AI-generated videos of late actor

Zelda Williams, the daughter of late American actor and comedian Robin Williams, recently posted a story on her Instagram account, asking people to stop sending her artificial intelligence (AI) generated videos of her father, who passed away in 2014, The Guardian reported.

 

Zelda, who directed "Lisa Frankenstein", wrote, "Please, just stop sending me AI videos of Dad." She added, “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 further went on to say, "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." Slamming those who have been sending her videos, 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."

 

Zelda concluded, “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 is not the first time that Zelda has slammed the artificial intelligence recreations of her late father. Earlier in 2023, when the Screen Actors Guild – American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) listed artificial intelligence recreations as a "mandatory subject of bargaining," in its strike, Zelda described AI versions of her late father as "personally disturbing."

 

Zelda's latest post comes amid a growing wave of celebrity deepfakes on social media, spanning everything from pornographic and political content to scams and advertisements.

 

Earlier in January this year, actor Scarlett Johansson cautioned people about the "imminent dangers of AI", after a deepfake video featuring her and other well-known Jewish celebrities, purportedly responding to antisemitic remarks by Kanye West, went viral.

 

The Robin Williams deepfakes reflect a wider surge in “AI slop”, low-quality, AI-generated content created solely for entertainment, driven by the rapid rise of free generative AI tools.