Robin Williams’ daughter, Zelda Williams, is begging fans to stop sharing AI-generated videos of her late father.
“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, 36, shared via her Instagram Story on Monday, October 6. “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.”
She called the videos “dumb” and “a waste of time and energy,” arguing that her dad would share the same views.
“Believe me, it’s NOT what he’d want,” Zelda added. “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.”
The actress and director told followers that they’re “not making art,” rather “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.” She noted that it was “gross” behavior.
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“And for the love of EVERYTHING, stop calling it ‘the future.’ AI is just badly recycling and regurgitating the past to be reconsumed,” Zelda concluded. “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.”
Zelda’s father, Robin, died by suicide at age 63 in August 2014. Hollywood has continued to remember the legendary comedian in the decade since his death.
Several stars have even written about their experiences with Robin in their respective memoirs. Josh Gad, for one, wrote in his January memoir, In Gad We Trust, that he formed a friendship with Robin (who was one of his longtime heroes) after they met backstage at The Book of Mormon.
“It’s so frustrating because you imagine somebody’s gonna be around forever,” Gad told Us Weekly exclusively earlier this year. “There was so much I planned to talk to him about. We had been speaking less and less. I saw him, I think, the year before he passed.”
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Gad continued, “I could tell he was down. He wasn’t his vibrant self, but I didn’t really know what was going on. I didn’t want to burden him with any conversations, certainly about myself. I feel grateful that he would’ve had an opportunity to hear me talk about how he inspired me — it’s something I said to him personally.”
Musician Mark Ronson also remembered a rather chance encounter with Robin while promoting his memoir, Night People, during an appearance on Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen last month.
“My earliest childhood memory is of Robin Williams standing over my bed,” Ronson recalled. “My mom hit the clubs heavy and she brought Robin Williams home from the clubs. She [said], ‘You’ve got to come [home with me]. My son’s a huge fan.’”
