Zelda Williams

Zelda Williams (born 1989) is an American director and actor — her feature debut, the horror-comedy Lisa Frankenstein, was released in 2024 — and the daughter of comedian Robin Williams, who died in 2014. Since the generative-AI boom she has become the most visible family member fighting the digital resurrection of a dead performer.

Fighting her father’s digital ghost

In October 2023, as SAG-AFTRA struck partly over AI recreations, Williams revealed she had already heard AI models mimicking her father’s voice, calling the practice personally disturbing and warning that living actors deserve the chance to build characters with their own choices. Her statement was widely cited as the human case for the union’s AI demands, alongside warnings from stars like Tom Hanks.

Two years later the problem had metastasized: strangers were sending her AI-generated videos of her father. In October 2025 she posted a raw plea — “Please, just stop sending me AI videos of Dad” — calling the clips dumb, a waste of time and energy, and “NOT what he’d want.” She followed with the line that traveled furthest: such videos are not art but “disgusting, over-processed hotdogs out of the lives of human beings.”

Robin Williams had presciently restricted exploitation of his likeness until 2039 in his estate planning; his daughter’s campaign extends that fight into a medium he never lived to see. Her objection is specific — the puppeteering of real, dead people who cannot consent — rather than a general verdict on AI tools.