Zelda Williams, the daughter of the late comedian and actor Robin Williams, is begging fans to stop sending her AI-generated videos of her father.
The 36-year-old actor and director posted a message Monday to her Instagram stories, telling her followers they needed to “stop believing” she welcomed their videos.
“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,” wrote the younger Williams.
“It’s dumb, it’s a waste of time and energy, and believe me, it’s NOT what he’d want,” she continued.
Williams went on to blast the practice of using AI-generated videos to depict any dead entertainers.
“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 wrote.
Such videos were “not art,” she said, calling them instead “disgusting over-processed hotdogs.”
AI videos, she continued, take the “lives of human beings” and the “history of art and music” and shove them “down someone else’s throat” so the videos’ creators can get “a little thumbs up” on social media.
Williams also said AI is not “the future.”
“AI is just badly recycling and regurgitating the past” to be “reconsumed,” she wrote.
Robin Williams, who was also father to two sons, Zachary Williams, 42, and Cody Williams, 33, died by suicide in 2014 at age 63 while suffering from Lewy body dementia.
Zelda Williams’ comments about AI-generated videos of her father come four years after she asked fans to stop sending her a viral video of comedian Jamie Costa impersonating her dad.
Costa’s video, which he titled “ROBIN Test Footage Scene,” shows him portraying Robin Williams during his days on the sitcom “Mork & Mindy.” The comedian is seen reacting to the news that his good friend and fellow comic actor John Belushi has died.
“Guys, I’m only saying this because I don’t think it’ll stop until I acknowledge it… please, stop sending me the ‘test footage,’” Zelda Williams tweeted at the time.
“I’ve seen it,” she wrote. “Jamie is SUPER talented, this isn’t against him, but y’all spamming me an impression of my late Dad on one of his saddest days is weird.”
