The cultural conversation around A.I. and deepfake technology has been extended as Zelda Williams (director of Lisa Frankenstein) and the daughter of the late comedian and Oscar-winning actor, Robin Williams (Good Will Hunting, Moscow On The Hudson) has vocalized her pushback against fans who have submitted to her A.I. recreations of her father.

“Please, just stop sending me AI videos of Dad,” Zelda wrote. “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.

Even beyond the questions of taste regarding relatives of the dead being bombarded with imagery, Williams raises other points that are at the heart of the A.I. debate. Chiefly, around the ethics of creating “content” of footage from previous artists, but without them being alive to either consent to such actions, or to work and hone their craft or art. Instead, Williams points to such videos as antithetical to art, especially as Robin Williams was famed for his idiosyncratic improvisations, characterizations, and the livewire energy that he was able to imbue them, which gave his comedy roles a sense of unpredictability, such as his famous voice work in Disney’s Aladdin.

“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,” she continued. “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.”

Zelda Williams, in her response, also pushes back against industry talk that hails A.I. as the future of media or “content.” This is not the first time Williams has voiced her opinions against A.I., as back during the 2023 Screen Actors Guild Strike, Williams had made social media posts affirming the SAG’s arguments against the technology and their fears about how Hollywood studios would seek to implement them.

“And for the love of EVERY THING, stop calling it ‘the future,’ AI is just badly recycling and regurgitating the past to be re-consumed. 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.”