Robin Williams’ daughter has called the use of AI to recreate her late father’s voice ‘personally disturbing’ as she calls for tighter controls on its use.
Zelda Williams was weighing in on the continuing dispute between the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) and Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) with artificial intelligence one of the key talking points.
The 34-year-old said that her father would have been ‘fighting the good fight’ with the acting union in celebrating the Mrs Doubtfire star’s birthday this year.
Zelda wrote in an Instagram story: ‘I’ve witnessed for YEARS how many people want want to train these [AI] models to create/recreate actors who cannot consent, like Dad.
‘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.’
Speaking out: Zara Williams (pictured with her late father Robin in 2009) has spoken about her discomfort at artificial intelligence recreating her father’s voice since he died
In the blood: Zelda has followed her father into showbusiness as an actress, writer and producer, (pictured back in June)
‘Disturbing’: Zelda took to Instagram to voice her concerns, not only regarding her personal feelings, but also about the threat AI poses to the entertainment industry
One of the key reasons why SAG and the Writers Guild of America (WGA) went on strike, with industrial action starting in May, was that workers were seeking protection from AI – the use of which is currently unrestricted.
Zelda added: ‘This isn’t theoretical, it is very very real.
‘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.
‘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.’
The post followed Zelda – who is an actress, writer, and producer – sharing a post on X by Justine Bateman who is the AI advisor to the SAG talks.
She warned: ‘As of now, there are no entertainment union restrictions on generative AI models ingesting 100 years of films/series, slicing and dicing them, and then popping out patchwork spoonfuls of all that work.’
The union’s president, Fran Drescher, also warned of actors being ‘replaced by robots’ as she announced the SAG strike in July.
Since then, in combination with the writers strike launched two months beforehand, Hollywood has been thrown into chaos, with countless productions halted.
It’s been nine years since beloved comic and Oscar-winning actor Robin died by suicide at his San Francisco Bay home aged 63.
He was suffering from the neurodegenerative disorder Lewy body dementia.
The Hollywood star had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, something he had kept secret, but an autopsy performed after his death on August 11, 2014, revealed he had been misdiagnosed and had instead been suffering from Lewy body dementia.
The official cause of death was ‘asphyxia by hanging’.
Toxicology reports revealed Williams had antidepressants, caffeine and levodopa, a drug used to treat Parkinson’s disease, in his system.
