bitchy | Zelda Williams: please, just stop sending me AI videos of my dad

Y’all know my feelings on AI; that it’s unreliable, untalented, steals the work of humans for its own training and output, will make the rich richer and the poor poorer, belittles the creative process, and is very likely spelling the doom of art and humanity. In short, not a fan. So you can imagine my discomfort during lunch hour at the office when a coterie of coworkers started singing its praises. It was lunch, our break time, and I didn’t want to be the righteous wet blanket! But inside, I felt like I was Roger Rabbit desperately trying not to take the bait of Christopher Lloyd tapping out “Shave and a Haircut.” I was simply bursting to cut into the conversation with my own “TWO BITS!” It was touch and go, but I held it together.

Still, I recognize that however emotional I feel about AI, my objections are on moral/principle grounds, not personal. For Zelda Williams, daughter of the late great Robin Williams, AI is personal in the most devastating way. For years she’s been bombarded with people sending her AI videos of her father. On Monday she took to Instagram begging people to please stop:

In a strongly-worded message to fans on her Instagram Stories on Monday, Oct. 6, the 36-year-old filmmaker asked that they “stop believing” that she wants to see these videos, or “that [she’ll] understand.”

“I don’t and I won’t,” she wrote. “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, full stop.”

She went on to call it a “waste of time and energy,” adding, “And believe me, it’s NOT what he’d want.”

Zelda went on to denounce a growing trend on social media, where people use AI-generators to create videos of deceased celebrities, her father included.

“To movie 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 Lisa Frankenstein director wrote.

She described the videos as “disgusting, over-processed hotdogs” that are being shoved down social media users’ throats, “hoping they’ll give you a little thumbs up and like it. Gross.”

Artificial intelligence is “badly recycling and regurgitating the past to be consumed,” Zelda wrote in a second Instagram Story post. “You are taking in the Human Centipede of content, and from the very end of the line, all while the folks at the front laugh and laugh, consume and consume.”

Zelda previously spoke out against the use of her father’s voice for AI in October 2023, when recreating a person’s image or voice without their approval was one of the leading concerns during the SAG-AFTRA strike.

“I am not an impartial voice in SAG’s fight against AI,” Zelda wrote at the time. “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 went on to call it “personally disturbing” to hear AI tools use her father’s voice and noted how there are ramifications that go “far beyond my own feelings.”

[From People]

This is so far beyond the pale of human decency. Zelda could not be clearer, each and every time she speaks out. So what’s it gonna take for people to get the message already? Sadly, I don’t have much hope. Not with people like Robin’s own former costar Matthew Lawrence loudly and carelessly advocating for Robin to be “the voice of AI.” Good grief. And in this case, it’s a family’s “grief” that’s being callously toyed with. Robin cannot consent to whatever these videos show him doing and his family doesn’t consent to their being made. End of story. Of course we want more of those we’ve loved and lost — that’s what makes LIFE so dear! But AI slop is not and can never be a resurrected person. Furthermore, if the people making these AI videos think they’re actually being innovative and creative themselves, they’re sorely mistaken.