Zelda Williams is slamming the use of artificial intelligence to recreate her late dad, Robin Williams.
“I am not an impartial voice in SAG’s fight against AI,” Zelda, 34, wrote via her Instagram Story on Sunday, October 1. “I’ve witnessed for YEARS how many people want to train these models to create/recreate actors who cannot consent, like Dad. This isn’t theoretical, it is very very real.”
She continued: “I’ve already heard AI used to get his ‘voice’ to say whatever people want and while I find it personally disturbing, the ramifications go far beyond my own feelings. Living actors deserve a chance to create characters with their choices, to voice cartoons, to put their HUMAN effort and time into the pursuit of performance.”
The use of AI in Hollywood has been a hot topic as of late. In May, the Writer’s Guild of America went on strike over concerns about the use of AI to create scripts, among other things. While the WGA ended their strike last week, the Screen Actors Guild strike continues with performers hoping to get more protections regarding the use of AI.
“These recreations are, at their very best, a poor facsimile of greater people, but at their worst, a horrendous Frankensteinian monster, cobbled together from the worst bits of everything this industry is, instead of what it should stand for,” Zelda concluded.
Robin was 62 when he died by suicide in August 2014 after battling anxiety and depression as well as Parkinson’s disease. The autopsy revealed he also had Lewy Body Dementia.
The Dead Poets Society actor is survived by wife Susan Schneider, son Zachary Williams, daughter Zelda and son Cody Williams. (Robin shared Zak, 40, with his first wife, Valerie Velardi, and Zelda and Cody, 31, with his second wife, Marsha Garces.)
In 2021, Zelda took to X, formerly known as Twitter, to ask fans to stop sending her videos of other comedians impersonating her dad.
“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,’” she wrote, in reference to a clip of Jamie Costa portraying the Good Will Hunting actor.
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Zelda, who has acting, writing, directing and producing credits to her name, spoke out about how she handled her dad’s passing during an interview with Chelsea Handler on Netflix’s Chelsea in 2016.
“It’s funny, because for a while I think nobody would let me do anything. It was like, ‘Oh s–t, are you OK?’ and then even if you are OK, they’re like, ‘But what’s wrong?’” she said at the time. “And so for a while, I was kind of left to my own devices and a lot of stuff came out of that, because I ended up writing 12 scripts. But then, I was also like, ‘Is there something wrong with me?’ And also, I didn’t see a lot of daylight for a while. But now I’m doing a lot more of that!”