People are way too comfortable with AI. They have been for a while and it is only getting worse. And it includes using AI to bring the dead back to life with no regard to how someone’s family might feel about it.
Public figures are often taken advantage of in the sense that the general public thinks they can say and do whatever they like with someone’s likeness. It is why we have real people fanfiction and why things like using AI to make a celebrity say something is happening. And that includes actors who have passed away like Robin Williams.
Williams is a beloved actor and his death is one that still weighs on many fans. Some fans, however, have used AI to recreate Williams in its artificial likeness and they think it is okay. You know who doesn’t like it and is well within her right to push back at the people doing this? Zelda Williams, his daughter.
Zelda Williams is a filmmaker herself and has expressed her gratitude with fans sharing their love of her father in the past. But if you have ever lost a parent, you know that that pain never really leaves you. Which is what makes Williams’ statement on people using AI to recreate him even more upsetting.
“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,” Williams wrote in her Instagram story. “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 the 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.”
The people defending the use of AI like this are even worse
In the replies to Variety‘s tweet about Williams, you can see a sea of people defending the AI monsters. One even wrote saying “Zelda, it’s going to get better. Soon we won’t be able to tell and neither will you.” The man in question was writing this to a woman who lost her father. I’m pretty sure she’ll be able to tell that her father isn’t alive and saying whatever nonsense you asked AI to say.
It all feels incredibly heartless. Seeing Williams’ post and how genuine she was in her asking people to stop only to be met with entitlement is outraging. If your parent passed on and you had to see people forcing them to say things they never said, how would you feel? Or does it not apply to YOU and only to the children of famous people?
I didn’t have to share my dad with the world. He was mine and mine alone and if I ever saw someone using him for AI purposes, I’d be furious because he DID NOT say those things. So even if you are making AI Robin Williams give you live advice, it isn’t him. You can tell yourself this is what he’d want (like the person who asked AI if Robin Williams would care) but the reality is that those who knew him are telling you you’re wrong. And you should be ashamed of yourselves for acting like what Zelda Williams is saying is anything other than RIGHT.
(featured image: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures)
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