Robin Williams’ Daughter Issues Plea Over AI Recreations of Her Father

Robin Williams’ daughter, Zelda Williams, has called for fans to stop making AI-generated videos of her late father.

Zelda Williams Asked Fans to ‘Please Just Stop’

On Oct. 6, Williams took to her Instagram Stories to decry a growing trend amongst the online community. The 36-year-old Lisa Frankenstein director asked her followers to “stop believing” she wants to see AI recreations of her father, or “that [she ’ll] understand” the reason for their creation. “Please, just stop sending me AI videos of Dad,” she wrote. “Stop believing that I want to see it or that I’ll understand—I don’t and I won’t.”

Williams continued: “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.”

Williams Thinks the Threat of AI Is ‘Very, Very Real’

She went on to lambaste the current trend of AI-generated celebrity videos, calling the entire enterprise “gross.” “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 hot dogs 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.”

In a follow-up post, Williams said that AI is “badly recycling and regurgitating the past to be consumed. 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.” The filmmaker previously spoke out against the use of AI in October 2023, during the SAG-AFTRA strike. “I am not an impartial voice in SAG’s fight against AI,” she 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.”

This story was originally reported by Men’s Journal on Oct 7, 2025, where it first appeared in the Entertainment section. Add Men’s Journal as a Preferred Source by clicking here.