Khaberni - Zelda Williams, daughter of the late American comedian Robin Williams, launched a scathing attack on content creators who use artificial intelligence tools to recreate images or voices of her father, describing the widely spread clips on the internet as "disgusting" and "a waste of time and energy" and "not what he would have wanted".
Williams said in a post on Instagram, "Please, just stop sending me AI clips of my father. Stop believing I want to see them or that I would understand; I don’t, and I won’t."
She added: "They move (the dead) like puppets just to create appalling trash for TikTok. It's insane."
The 36-year-old actress likened the clips to "an overly processed disgusting hot dog of human life and the history of art and music", emphasizing that their creators "do not offer art, but soulless digital nonsense".
In the conclusion of her last post, Williams said that those who describe artificial intelligence as "the future" are mistaken, adding: "Artificial intelligence is nothing but bad recycling and rehashing of the past to be re-consumed".
Coinciding with the launch of "Sura 2" tool
"Fortune" website noted that Williams's post coincided with the launch of "Open AI's" new video generation tool "Sura 2", which operates on an invitation-only basis. Although the number of authorized users is limited, social networks have filled with fake clips of deceased celebrities, including rappers "Tupac Shakur" and "The Notorious B.I.G.", as well as the late wildlife adventurer Steve Irwin.
The site stated that "Open AI" policy prohibits creating images of living people without their consent, but on the other hand, it allows what it describes as "historical figures," which Zelda considered an ethical loophole in handling the legacy of the deceased.
Not the First Time
"Variety", the site specialized in entertainment news, also pointed out that Zelda's objection to cloning her father with artificial intelligence was not the first. In 2023, when the Screen Actors Guild included the issue of artificial intelligence in the negotiation clauses with studios, Williams said she was "not a neutral voice" in the battle against digital cloning.
She explained then, "I have seen over the years how much people want to train these models to recreate actors who cannot give their consent, like my father. This is not theoretical, it's very real."
And in other posts that year, she described these models as "a terrifying Frankenstinian monster" made from the worst of the industry, and that they were "a poor imitation of greater people."
An Old Personal Pain
"Sky News" network's website pointed out that Zelda's position is not only connected with new technologies but also with her suffering from her father's death since 2014. In 2020, she wrote a poignant post on the anniversary of his death, saying that sometimes she "hides under a pile of other people's memories" when people overwhelm her with their messages and feelings, describing this as making her feel like "a road-side memorial" rather than a real person.
She added that, despite her gratitude for the love people have for her father, she finds it difficult to bury her own memories under a flood of content and collective nostalgia.
Last year, Zelda intervened to refute a rumor originating from AI-generated content, claiming that her father owned a pet monkey. She clarified that the circulating image shows the actor monkey Crystal, who co-starred with Robin Williams in "Night at the Museum". And she said, "My father did not own a pet monkey, and no one should. That was his co-star and is now living in its natural place."
