Zelda Williams has appealed to fans to stop sending her artificial intelligence videos that recreate her late father, Robin Williams, calling the clips “disgusting,” “horrible TikTok slop,” and contrary to what he would have wanted. In messages posted to Instagram on Monday, the actor and director urged, “Please, just stop sending me AI videos of Dad. Stop believing I wanna see it or that I’ll understand, I don’t and I won’t… if you’ve got any decency, just stop doing this to him and to me,” adding, “it’s NOT what he’d want.” The 36-year-old accused creators of exploiting real people and culture, writing, “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.”
Williams’s posts follow a years-long pattern in which she has objected to digital or impersonated recreations of her father. In 2021 she asked followers to stop circulating a viral “test footage” scene of an actor imitating Robin Williams during a painful period of his life, writing, “please, stop sending me the ‘test footage’… y’all spamming me an impression of my late Dad on one of his saddest days is weird.” In 2023, during the Hollywood actors’ strike, she criticized AI voice clones as “personally disturbing” when used to simulate the dead without consent. Her latest messages escalate those concerns to a plea that people “just stop sending” the videos to her at all.
In the new posts Williams framed her argument in moral and artistic terms, saying the AI recreations degrade both the individual and the craft. She described the clips as “horrible TikTok slop” and accused their makers of “puppeteering” the dead for engagement. She also rejected the idea that personal familiarity would bring her to appreciate the technology, writing that it is “a waste of time and energy” and insisting that those who send her the videos are not honoring her father’s memory.
The appeal comes amid heightened industry debate over generative AI and posthumous “digital replicas.” SAG-AFTRA’s 2023 film and television contract requires informed consent for creating and using a performer’s digital replica and sets project-by-project limits on reuse, measures the union calls “historic.” Regulators and state lawmakers have begun to craft laws around deceased performers’ likenesses; in California, statutes now require permission from an estate before entertainment companies deploy digital replicas of dead actors. Williams’s comments align with that push for consent and control, but are directed at the informal, viral uses that sit outside studio contracts and circulate on social media without approval.