Zelda Williams, daughter of the late comedian and actor Robin Williams, is calling on fans to stop sending her artificial intelligence–generated videos featuring her father’s likeness. In a passionate message posted to Instagram, Williams said the videos are disturbing and exploitative, and that they violate the legacy of one of Hollywood’s most beloved performers.
“Please, just stop sending me AI videos of Dad,” Williams wrote on Monday. “Stop believing I wanna see it or that I’ll understand — I don’t and I won’t. It’s dumb, it’s a waste of time and energy, and believe me, it’s NOT what he’d want.”
Williams, who directed Lisa Frankenstein, said she finds it “maddening” that technology is being used to reduce real people into digital imitations. “You’re not making art,” she wrote. “You’re making disgusting, over-processed hotdogs out of the lives of human beings… and then shoving them down someone else’s throat hoping they’ll give you a little thumbs up.”
Her father, Robin Williams — the legendary star of Mrs. Doubtfire, Good Will Hunting, and Dead Poets Society — died by suicide in 2014 after battling Lewy body dementia, a degenerative brain disease that affects movement and cognition.
Zelda’s message follows a surge of AI-generated celebrity “resurrections” flooding social media, fueled by tools like OpenAI’s new video generator Sora 2. The clips have included fabricated performances from deceased stars such as Michael Jackson and Betty White, prompting growing alarm about the ethical use of AI in entertainment.
Her frustration also comes after actor Matthew Lawrence, who played Williams’s son in Mrs. Doubtfire, said he’d “love” to use AI to recreate Williams’s voice “with the family’s permission.” Zelda’s latest comments suggest that approval is unlikely.
This isn’t her first stand against the misuse of her father’s likeness. During Hollywood’s 2023 actors’ strike, she warned that studios were already experimenting with AI models trained on her father’s voice. “I’ve witnessed for YEARS how many people want to train these models to recreate actors who cannot consent,” she said at the time.
Zelda Williams ended her latest post by condemning AI’s growing dominance in art and media. “AI is just badly recycling and regurgitating the past to be reconsumed,” she wrote. “You are taking in the Human Centipede of content… while the folks at the front laugh and laugh, consume and consume.”
