Nearly a month after the late Robin Williams’ 75th birthday, his three children have revived his Instagram account as a hub for honoring their father’s legacy — and to combat the “rampant AI abuse” of his likeness.
“We’re grateful to see new generations discovering his work while longtime fans continue to celebrate the joy he brought into their lives,” Zak, Zelda and Cody Williams wrote in a joint statement posted on the actor’s Instagram page on Monday. “As technology evolves, we want this to be a safe, trusted place where the stories, photos, videos, and memories shared reflect his legacy with authenticity, warmth, and care. This is our way of sharing his unique talent and humor with the world, including the moments that made us and so many of you laugh, as we remember our Dad’s extraordinary life and work. He continues to inspire us and delight people all over the world.”
Zelda Williams, the Oscar-winning comedian’s eldest daughter, elaborated on the decision in an Instagram story on her personal account, recognizing it could be “triggering” for some of Williams’ fans to see the account active again.
“Believe me, I know it’s a little strange,” she wrote. “Making that space into one where people can find authentic clips and photos of him is one of the best ways we’ve now found to fight back against rampant AI abuse of his voice and likeness on here.”
The decision comes as the rampant, unauthorized production of AI-generated deepfakes of celebrities both alive and deceased has forced those figures and their estates to figure out how to make sure verified images break through. His Instagram account has been dormant since his 2014 death.
Zelda Williams has torn into the unauthorized use of her father’s likeness before, asking those in October who sent her AI videos of her father to “stop doing this to him and to me, to everyone even, full stop.”
“It’s dumb, it’s a waste of time and energy, and believe me, it’s NOT what he’d want,” she wrote in an Instagram story at the time. “To watch the legacies of real people be condensed down to ‘this vaguely looks and sounds like them so that’s enough’, just so other people can churn out horrible TikTok slop puppeteering them is maddening.”
Those comments followed similar ones she made in 2023 during the Screen Actors Guild strike, where she regarded AI videos featuring her father’s voice as “personally disturbing.”
“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,” she wrote.
Robin Williams,Zelda Williams
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