Robin Williams’ daughter Zelda showed her support for striking actors, as she spoke about her own experiences seeing artificial intelligence used to recreate her late dad’s voice. Zelda, 34, detailed how upsetting it was for her to see her father’s likeness used without his consent in the years after his death. “I am not an impartial voice in SAG’s fight against AI,” she began her statement on an Instagram Story.
Zelda continued and said that SAG actors’ concerns about AI aren’t unfounded, as she’s seen so many people use AI to create models in her father’s likeness. She called out the people who have mimicked the Good Will Hunting actor’s likeness without his permission. “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. I’ve already heard AI used to get his ‘voice’ to say whatever people want and while I find it personally disturbing, the ramifications go far beyond my own feelings,” she wrote.
Sharing this from @zeldawilliams, whose drive to protect her dad’s legacy may seem unique because of his singular genius, but ultimately will be familiar to all artists. To me this is the #1 reason to get out and support SAG on the picket lines even though our deal is done. pic.twitter.com/zNXgBlOoEV
— carina adly mackenzie (@cadlymack) October 1, 2023
After calling out the people who used Robin’s likeness, Zelda explained why it was important to allow living actors to keep performing without using AI. “Living beyond my own feelings. Living actors deserve a chance to create characters with their choices to voice cartoons, to put their HUMAN effort and time into the pursuit of performance,” she said. “These recreations are, at their very best, a poor facsimile of greater people, but at their worst, a horrendous Frankensteinian monster, cobbled together from the worst bits of everything this industry is, instead of what it should stand for.”
Robin died at 63 in August 2011. After his death, an autopsy revealed that the Aladdin actor had been battling Lewy body dementia. Zelda was Robin’s second child and his only daughter. He had his first son Zak with his first wife Valerie Velardi. He had Zelda and his younger son Cody with his second wife Marsha Garces. At the time of his death, Robin was married to his third wife Susan Schneider.