Robin Williams’ daughter Zelda criticizes “disturbing” AI recreations of his voice

Zelda Williams has described the artificial recreation of her late father Robin Williams’ voice as “disturbing”.

The 34-year-old actress announced in a statement in her Instagram stories over the weekend that she was disturbed to hear an artificial intelligence trying to imitate the voice of the star of “Mrs. Doubtfire”, who died in 2014 at the age of 63.

“I am not an impartial voice in SAG’s fight against AI,” she began, referring to the SAG and AFTRA strike. “I have witnessed for years how many people want to train these models to create/recreate actors who cannot consent, like Papa. This is not theory, it is very, very real.”

She continued, “I’ve already heard of AI being used to make its ‘voice’ say whatever people want, and while I find that personally disturbing, the consequences go far beyond my own feelings. Living actors deserve a chance to create characters with their choices, voice cartoons, and put their HUMAN effort and time into the pursuit of a performance.”

The Writers Guild of America went on strike in May, while members of the artists’ union SAG-AFTRA followed suit in July. One of the main points of contention revolves around whether their work might be replaced or recreated by AI.

At the end of her speech, Zelda emphasized that AI technology will never be as good as the real thing.

“These recreations are, at best, a poor recreation of great people, but at worst, a horrific Frankenstein monster cobbled together from the worst parts of this industry instead of what it should stand for,” she explained.

The WGA strike ended last week, but the labor dispute at SAG-AFTRA is still ongoing.