Almost a decade after his tragic passing, iconic comedian Robin Williams is being remembered in the worst way possible: by mind-numbing AI slop video tributes that gullible netizens are sharing with abandon on social media.
His surviving daughter and film director Zelda Williams has been watching with dismay.
“That supposedly ‘private video’ of dad that I’ve been shown talking about conspiracies is clearly AI, and not even particularly convincing AI,” she tweeted on Monday. “Anyone who claims to be a fan who believes it clearly listened to his movies on mute because that voice is robotic and terrible.”
A brief search on the Elon Musk-run social media site reveals a pixelated 13-second clip in which an AI-generated Robin Williams claims to have “been in this industry for a long time,” adding that he’d “seen things.” It’s not immediately clear if it’s the video Zelda Williams was referring to, but given how widely it’s been making its rounds, there’s a good chance it is.
“The real elite, the ones at the very top, they don’t just play power games, they worship something much darker,” the AI imitation of Williams added, conspiratorially.
As the affixed community note points out, it’s a deepfake that falsely claims to “show a 2013 private Robin Williams recording.” Nonetheless, the video was shared thousands of times and received over 11,000 likes.
In her statement, Zelda Williams singled out those spreading the AI content.
“That said, a human made a robot create it, and to you I say: leave him out of your delusional bllsh*t and let him rest,” she wrote. “If you cannot make your case without making a dead man make it more convincing for you, then tell me: who’s the one manipulating the public thru media now?”
Williams also took umbrage with the abysmal state of Musk’s microblogging platform, which has become renowned for facilitating the spread of disinformation and hate speech.
“I hate this cesspool of an app,” she wrote. “It’s mostly bots and people willingly being duped by bots at this point so not sure why I feel the need to come back to clarify, but I love him, so I will.”
“Just because he’s gone does not mean he’s now your puppet,” Williams added of her father. “Have some shame.”
It’s far from the first time she’s voiced her disgust. In 2023, she found AI models that were used to mimic his voice “personally disturbing.”
Two years later, after text-to-video generators became popular, she sent out a similar plea.
“Please, just stop sending me AI videos of Dad,” she wrote at the time. “Stop believing I wanna see it or that I’ll understand, I don’t and I won’t.”
The post Robin Williams’ Daughter Horrified by People Creating AI Conspiracy Videos of Her Dad Long After His Death appeared first on Futurism.
