Zelda Williams Draws the Line: No More AI Robin Williams Videos
As AI re-creations of Robin Williams flood social feeds, his daughter Zelda has had enough and is urging fans to stop sending them to her.
AI keeps trying to cosplay as the future of entertainment. Meanwhile, the people actually affected by it are left to deal with the mess. Case in point: Zelda Williams just asked everyone to stop sending her AI videos of her dad, Robin Williams.
Zelda Williams draws a line
Per Deadline, Zelda posted a series of notes on Instagram Stories telling fans to knock it off with the AI Robin clips flooding her DMs.
"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. 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."
"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 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."
"And for the love of EVERYTHING, stop calling it 'the future.' AI is just badly recycling and regurgitating the past to be reconsumed. 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."
Why this is flaring up now
Hollywood has been in a long, messy fight with AI: job fears on one side, copyright and basic decency concerns on the other. Some folks, like the team behind AI actress Tilly Norwood, say the tech is just a useful tool. Maybe. But hand that tool to the entire internet with wildly different sensibilities and, shocker, people push it way past anything respectful.
OpenAI’s Sora text-to-video tool has turbocharged that problem. Lately there’s been a spike in videos resurrecting dead stars for novelty content, including a clip making the rounds where Tupac Shakur and The Notorious B.I.G. squash their feud on WWE. It’s the exact kind of thing that sounds clever for five seconds and then feels grim.
This is not the first time fans tried to bring him back
Years ago, actor Jamie Costa went viral with an eerily good Robin Williams impression in what looked like a proof-of-concept scene for a biopic. Plenty of people applauded it. Zelda, while complimentary of Costa’s talent, still said the whole thing was surreal to watch—especially since it happened without her blessing. Different tool, same unease.
A co-star suggests a different route
More recently, Matthew Lawrence, who worked with Robin on Mrs. Doubtfire, floated the idea of recreating Robin’s voice with AI—but only if the family approved.
"I would love - now, obviously, with the respect and with the okay from his family - but I would love to do something really special with his voice because I know for a generation, that voice is just so iconic... It’s not just the fact that I knew him and worked with him and so it’s in my head - it’s in everybody’s head. And it would be so cool."
So, yeah. There’s a conversation to be had about when and how this tech gets used. But at minimum, take the family at their word: do not send them AI clips of their loved one. That should not be a hard ask.