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Robin Williams' daughter pleads for people to stop sending AI videos of her dad
- insane_dreamer 1y agoKlara and the Sun, by Kazuo Ishiguro is a thoughtful book that touches on this topic.
- WorldPeas 1y agoAs a fan of his work, I too wish it all to stop. People always go headlong for the people who we all miss the most, yet don't understand that it was their underlying humanity that made them so special.
- randycupertino 1y agoRather than "pleading" for them to stop, wouldn't she have more success going after the ai content creation companies via legal process? I thought actors have the right to control commercial uses of their name, image, voice, likeness, or other recognizable aspects of their persona, thus if people are paying for the AI creation wouldn't the companies be wrongly profiting off his likeness? Although I'm sure some laws haven’t yet been explicitly updated yet to cover AI replicas.
- jMyles 1y agoIt's so frustrating that "just call the cops" is the answer, at the very same time that the cops are creating a massive disruption to our society. And even if this were a viable answer: legal process _where_? What's to stop these "creators" from simply doing their computation in a different jurisdiction? We need systems that work without this one neat authoritarian trick. If your solution requires that you lean on the violence of the state, it's unlikely to be adopted by the internet.
- randycupertino 1y agoLegal process is not an “authoritarian trick," it's the primary enforceable framework for wide scale, lasting societal change as it's the only method that actually has teeth. Also, calling legal enforcement as “leaning on the violence of the state” is hyperbolic and a false dichotomy. Every system of rights for and against companies (contracts, privacy, property, speech) comes down to enforceable legal policies. Examples of cases that have shaped society: Brown v Board of Ed, pollution lawsuits against 3M and Dow Chemical, Massachusetts v. EPA resulted in the clean air act, DMCA, FOSTA-SESTA, the EU Right to Be Forgotten, Reno v. ACLU which outlined speech protections online, interracial marriage protected via Loving v. Virginia, the ruling that now requires police have a warrant to access cell phone data was Carpenter v. US, and these are just a few! > And even if this were a viable answer: legal process _where_? What's to stop these "creators" from simply doing their computation in a different jurisdiction? Jurisdictional challenges don't mean a law is pointless. Yes, bad actors can operate from other jurisdictions, but this is true for all transnational issues, from hacking to human smuggling to money laundering. DMCA takedowns work globally, as does GDPR for non-EU companies. Nobody’s arguing for blind criminalization or over policing AI. But perhaps there should be some legal frameworks to protect safe and humane use.
- Centigonal 1y agoHow long would the legal process take? How much would it cost? Does she have to sue all proprietors of commercial video generator models? What about individuals using open source models? How many hours of her time will these suits take to organize? How many AI videos of her dad will she have to watch as part of the proceedings? Will she be painted as a litigious villain by the PR firms of these very well-capitalized interests? Her goal seems to be to reduce the role in her life played by AI slop portrayals of her dad. Taking the legal route seems like it would do the opposite.
- latexr 1y ago> Rather than "pleading" for them to stop, wouldn't she have more success going after the ai content creation companies via legal process? But that shouldn’t be the first step. Telling your fellow man “what you are doing is bothering me, please stop” is significantly simpler, faster, and cheaper than contacting lawyers and preparing for a possibly multi-year case where all the while you’ll have to be reminded and confronted with the very thing you don’t want to deal with. If asking doesn’t work, then think of other solutions.
- WorldPeas 1y agoAsking solves it for you, biting the hand makes them think twice about doing it to others, but good luck doing that to the many-headed serpent of the internet.
- Razengan 1y agoHow about just praying for an asteroid to reset us and hope we get shit right the next time around
- pstuart 1y agoIf we can't get it right this time, there's no indication a reboot would be any better (because humans).
- dylan604 1y agowho says the next time will be humans? there was no next time for the dinosaurs. maybe humans are not the end, but just a rung on the ladder.
- fragmede 1y agoHow about squirrels? I think it would be fun to have a tail.
- Razengan 1y agoI don't know. I mean, things could have gone very differently (in a better or worse way) and the world may be unrecognizable today if certain key events did not happen. Like if nothing sparked the World Wars (conversely: or if Hitler won). Or Greece harnessed steam or electricity to spur an industrial revolution 2200 years ago. Or if Christianity etc. never caught on.
- izzydata 1y agoAsking people to stop seems like the first step. Especially since this is specific to people sending them to her in particular. People think they are being nice and showing some form of affection, but as she mentions she finds it disturbing instead. So I don't think there was actually malicious intent and asking people to stop will probably work.
- burkaman 1y agoNo, she would not have any success. Take a look at this list and think about the sheer number of companies she would need to sue: https://artificialanalysis.ai/text-to-video/arena?tab=leaderboard-text https://artificialanalysis.ai/text-to-video/arena?tab=leader.... You'll see Google, one of the richest companies on the planet, and OpenAI, the richest private company on the planet. You'll see plenty of Chinese companies (Bytedance, Alibaba, Tencent, etc.). You'll also see "Open Source" - these models can't be sued, and removing them from the internet is obviously impossible. The most these lawsuits could hope to do is generate publicity, which would likely just encourage more people to send her videos. This direct plea has that risk too, but I think "please don't do this" will feel a lot less adversarial and more genuine to most people than "it should be illegal for you to do this".
- randycupertino 1y ago> The most these lawsuits could hope to do is generate publicity, which would likely just encourage more people to send her videos. It's not fruitless and doesn't only generate publicity. Some states like California and Indiana recognize and protect the commercial value of a person's name, voice, image, and likeness after death for 70 years, which in this case would apply for Robin William's daughter. Tupac's estate successfully sued Drake to take his AI generated voice of Tupac out of his Kendrick Lamar diss track. There is going to be a deluge of copyright suits against OpenAI for their videos of branded and animated characters. Disney just sent a cease and desist to Character.ai last week for using copyrighted characters without authorization.
- burkaman 1y agoWhat I'm saying is that successfully suing individual companies or people would have zero impact on her actual problem. If California says it's illegal and OpenAI says they'll ban anyone who tries it, then these people can effortlessly switch to a Grok or Alibaba or open source model, and they'll be extra incentivized to do so because they'll find it fun to "fight back" against California or luddites or whatever. Do you see the difference? Tupac's estate successfully stopped one guy from using Tupac's voice, but they have not and cannot stop the rest of the world from doing so. The same is true for Disney, it is trivial for anyone to generate images and videos using Disney characters today, and it will be forever. Their lawsuit can only hope to prevent a specific very small group of people from making money off of that. The problem she wants to solve is "people are sending me AI videos of my dad". She will not have any success solving this problem using lawsuits, even if the lawsuits themselves succeed in court.
- lukev 1y agoThere's two things potentially at stake here: 1. Whether there is an effective legal framework that prevents AI companies from generating the likenesses of real people. 2. The shared cultural value that, this is not cool actually, not respectful, and in fact somewhat ghoulish. Establishing a cultural value is probably more important than any legal structures.
- SkyBelow 1y agoI think there is also a major distinction between creating the likeness of someone and sending that likeness to the family of the deceased. If AI somehow allowed me to create videos of the likeness of Isaac Newton or George Washington, that seems far less a concern because they are long dead and none of their grieving family is being hurt by the fakes.
- fragmede 1y agohttps://sora.chatgpt.com/p/s_68e57c1b22708191be1d249c1a52b2bb https://sora.chatgpt.com/p/s_68e57c1b22708191be1d249c1a52b2b...
- estebarb 1y agoNot really. From what I understood of the interview is that her complain is not about money or compensation (which she may be entitled to), but about how people use the technology and how they interact with it and with her. Legal process or even the companies implementing policies won't change that problematic society behavior. Since the raise of generative AI we have seen all sorts of pathetic usages, like "reviving" assesinated people and making them speak to the alleged killer in court, training LLMs to mimic deseased loved ones, generative nudification, people that is not using their brain anymore because they need to ask ChatGPT/Grok... some of them are crimes, others not. Regardless most of them should stop.
- dylan604 1y agowhat if the creators are not in the same legal jurisdiction or in some place that does not care about whatever rights you think are being wronged?
- Nevermark 1y agoImagine if Barbara Streisand died, and her estate tried suing people for recreations of her.... [0] Robin Williams' daughter is wise to avoid creating a "Williams Effect". [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect
- barbazoo 1y ago[flagged]
- scotty79 1y agoHow a block list with robust and easilly accessible ways of extending it is not a first thing that gets implemented for any social app is beyond me.
- dingnuts 1y agoOh sure, side with the harassers of a grieving person. Being harassed? Well you could just go away! Just stop using this service the rest of society uses! Too bad your dad died and people are harassing you about it! A ghoulish take. Victim blaming. A compassionate person would delete it.
- _9za9 1y agoWell, he’s right. Entering the public square means exposure not only to what someone chooses to see but also to what others choose to share with them. That isn’t harassment, despite the victim mentality you’re promoting. If she doesn’t like it, she’s free to leave social media, simple as that. The same principle applies here on Hacker News: we all have to read posts from people who dislike AI. I believe those people will eventually be left behind, I don't care if they are left behind, and I have no interest in reading anti-AI arguments in 2025. After all, where were they when AI algorithms were being developed back in the 50s and 60s?
- nickthegreek 1y ago> That isn’t harassment, despite the victim mentality you’re promoting. Are you stating that this isn't harassment, or that you are incapable of being harassed on social media? > Entering the public square means exposure not only to what someone chooses to see but also to what others choose to share with them. This isnt a public square, let alone even a physical one. Even in the physical space, I am not beholden to look at what others share. I am under no obligation to take the flyer as I pass by. I am under no obligation to stop and listen as they prance around and try to get into my face. These companies could provide a set level of tools for its users to be able to appropriately weed their own gardens, but they mostly chose not too. If she could set her app to not show her any video links from parties she didn't follow that pinged her, this probably wouldnt be an issue. There could easily be an middle ground between accept all harassment, and not visit the social club.
- dingnuts 1y ago[flagged]
- AfterHIA 1y ago[flagged]
- pdonis 1y agoGood for her. I wish more people in a position like hers would speak out about this.
- ndriscoll 1y agoSending someone unwanted fake clips of their dead family is unhinged, but it's a bit much to just blanket assume you can't do cool things with generative models or that the artists themselves won't approve. e.g. Liam Gallagher's reaction to AISIS[0] was that it was "mad as fuck I sound mega". I don't know what he'd have to say about his AI vocals on a High Flying Birds song (maybe they'd be okay with that collab now?), but this "cover" is also pretty awesome[1]. As usual, it's up to the wielder of a tool to use it well. Complaining about ML-augmented art "recycling and regurgitating the past to be re-consumed" strikes me as similar to complaining about mashups. If it's not for you, just move on. It's still a form of creative expression that others enjoy. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whB21dr2Hlc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whB21dr2Hlc [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4R4VLQM0P4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4R4VLQM0P4
- JohnFen 1y ago> it's up to the wielder of a tool to use it well. Wouldn't "using it well" include not using it to puppet dead people unless they've given permission to do that? > "recycling and regurgitating the past to be re-consumed" strikes me as similar to complaining about mashups. Mashups are very different because that's actually using the work of the original artists in a different context. It's not creating counterfeit work the original artists never made.
- cowboylowrez 1y ago
- carabiner 1y agoI wish AI had never been invented.
- _9za9 1y ago[flagged]
- DangitBobby 1y agoIt's a technology that enables a set of behaviors. Seems reasonable to wish that didn't happen if you don't like the behaviors.
- scotty79 1y agoHow about just wishing that the behaviors didn't happen?
- DangitBobby 1y agoI see wishing people weren't the way they are is a bit more... intrusive? than just wishing LLMs were slept on. Like if you had a genie in a bottle the less evil wish would be for LLMs to not have been developed.
- nemo 1y agoThoughts and prayers.
- danielvf 1y agoSimilarly, it drives me up the wall with people posting black and white "historical photographs" of history happenings, that are AI slop, and from the wrong era. Just yesterday someone posted a "photo" of a 1921 where a submarine lost power, and built sails out of bedsheets to get home. But the photo posted looked like a post WWII two submarine, rigged like a clipper ship, rather than the real life janky 1920's bed sheet rig and characters everywhere. Actual incident (with actual photo): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_R-14 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_R-14
- dr-detroit 1y ago[dead]
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- ASalazarMX 1y agoOr people that frequent a questions and answers website, only to copy the AI answer slop as if it was their own. I mean, thank you I guess, but anyone can do that with the littlest of efforts; and anyone with actual intention of understanding and answering the question would have recognized it as slop ans stopped right there.
- UncleMeat 1y agoIt is no surprise to me that AI images have become an aesthetic of ascendant fascism. AI contains the same distaste for the actual life and complexity of history and preference for a false memory of the past with vaseline smeared on the lens.
- piva00 1y agoWhile also rhyming with the obsession for futurism from past fascism, the intertwining of calling back to a romanticised past with an inhuman futurism is very much a pillar of the ideology.
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- colechristensen 1y ago[flagged]
- dcrazy 1y agoRobin Williams lived in California which has legal protection for celebrity likenesses. But likenesses rights aren’t going to stop the problem, because it’s individual people who are recreating the likenesses en masse.
- 317070 1y agoIt is technically correct that Sam Altman and everyone on OpenAI's board are individual people, but I don't see how that would prevent legal action?
- yoyohello13 1y agoI honestly can't see any upside whatsoever in creating AI Simulacra of dead people. It kind of disgusts me actually.
- jmorenoamor 1y agoNot my upside, but there is a big one: money.
- anigbrowl 1y agoIt's all downside. I've seen cases where this is used to 'give murder victims a voice' recently, both on CNN where they 'interview' an AI representation of the victim and in court, where one was used for a victim impact statement as part of the sentencing. Those people would laugh you out of the room if you suggested providing testimony via spirit medium, but as soon as it comes out of a complicated machine their brains sieze up and they uncritically accept it.
- yoyohello13 1y agoI saw that too. It's so unbelievably and transparently emotional manipulation. It would be comical if it wasn't so sad and terrifying.
- nhecker 1y agoHold on, really? That seems wildly crazy to me, but sadly I'd believe it. I'd love it if you had a source or two to share of some of the more egregious examples of this.
- yoyohello13 1y agoThis was the main one I saw https://judicature.duke.edu/articles/ai-victim-impact-statement/ https://judicature.duke.edu/articles/ai-victim-impact-statem...
- UncleMeat 1y agoI've seen a lot of horrible uses of AI, but this particular application the most sickening to my very core (schoolchildren using AI to generate porn of their classmates is #2 for me).
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- b34k3r 1y ago"We must negate the machines-that-think. Humans must set their own guidelines. This is not something machines can do. Reasoning depends upon programming, not on hardware, and we are the ultimate program! Our Jihad is a "dump program." We dump the things which destroy us as humans!". I know, Dune and yeah, i get it - science fiction aint real life - but im still into these vibes. Anyone wanna start a club?
- Barrin92 1y ago>We must negate the machines-that-think I wish we had machines that actually thought because they'd at least put an end to whatever this is. In the words of Schopenhauer, this is the worst of all possible worlds not because it couldn't be worse but because if it was a little bit worse it'd at least cease to exist. It's just bad enough so that we're stuck with the same dreck forever. This isn't the Dune future but the Wall-E future. The problem with the Terminator franchise and all those Eliezer Yudkowsky folks is that they are too optimistic. https://i.ytimg.com/vi/NdN153giLdI/sddefault.jpg https://i.ytimg.com/vi/NdN153giLdI/sddefault.jpg
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- measurablefunc 1y agoTechnocracy is ascendant, the only question is whether you subscribe to the optimistic or pessimistic variant. But don't worry, the current state of affairs is a fluke & equilibrium will be restored once all the easily combustible sources of fossil fuels are exhausted.
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- 0xEF 1y ago"Once, men turned their thinking over to machines in hopes that this would set them free, but that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them." Yeah, I'm in. Let me know when and where the meetings are held.
- rglover 1y agoI just look forward to the point where this is so common it becomes oversaturated and the original incentives go away/scare off the folks doing this stuff (inevitable as, like parasites, they only stay around as long as the host is providing them sustenance).
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- tasty_freeze 1y agoIf you are old enough, you remember when having a CD player in your car made you a target for a break-in. Many models were removable so you could take the CD player with you when you left your car. Once it became a standard option, there was no point in stealing them anymore due to the saturation effect you brought up. Now having a CD player in your car is steampunk.
- danudey 1y agoWhen the goal is "harassing someone into depression and suicide" though, the incentive will never go away. People are going to start doing things like this to be deliberately malicious, sending videos of their dead parents saying horrible things about them and so on. The problem isn't that the technology is new and exciting and people are getting carried away, the problem is the technology.
- callc 1y ago> The problem isn't that the technology is new and exciting and people are getting carried away, the problem is the technology. Hard disagree. Technology is a tool. Tools don’t do anything without a human in the loop, even if to initially run an autonomous system. Even technology like guns and nukes are not inherently bad. Can we be trusted to behave ourselves with such tools? I would argue “no”.
- port11 1y agoThis ’technology isn't evil’ tale is as old as time… Technologies may not seem inherently bad, but it they tend to be used in bad ways, the difference is minimal. Deepfakes have practically no positive use and plenty of potential for abuse. They're not a neutral technology. They're a negative social outcome from what might be a neutral technology (ML).
- yieldcrv 1y agostop sending them to her its not really a story, this is an instagram post about someone that can be tagged and forwarded items on instagram by strangers, for those of you that aren't familiar this is not about any broader AI thing and its not news at all. a journalist made an article out of someone's instagram post
- zem 1y agoI think it's definitely newsworthy that so-called fans are sending AI slop of robin williams to his own daughter! it's sadly indicative of the general state of fandom that they didn't even think of how it would land, or that she would be anything other than appreciative.
- zatkin 1y agoI can't help but to think that this will inevitably lead to the Streisand effect.
- latexr 1y agoIf people see someone’s request to stop sending them AI slop of their dead father and it causes them to send the person more of it, that goes beyond the Streisand effect (which is driven by curiosity) and into outright cruelty.
- al_borland 1y agoThat sounds like more of a 4chan effect.
- shevy-java 1y agoAI is killing society now.
- jader201 1y agoCan we put Pandora back in the box?
- sethammons 1y agoNit: Pandora wasn't in the box; she was the keeper of the box and told not to open it.
- rzzzt 1y agoPandora's monster, Pandora is the scientist.
- sethammons 1y agoI snorted. Thanks
- KaiserPro 1y agoIf we are going to be full pedantry, it wasn't a box it was a jar, blame Erasmus for that one
- jader201 1y agoI was waiting for someone to point this out. HN came through for me.
- ericmcer 1y agoIt is definitely changing it. We were already experiencing the move from a "celebrity" being an individual with huge talent to just a marketing tool that gets giant financial rewards for merely existing. These larger than life pop culture icons that 100s of millions or billions of people care about is a recent phenomenon and I welcome generative AI killing it off. If media had one-shot generated actors we could just appreciate whatever we consumed and then forget about everyone involved. Who cares what that generated character likes to eat for breakfast or who they are dating they don't exist.
- Jordan-117 1y agoI remember her having a similar reaction to that actor who uploaded "test footage" of him impersonating Robin in the hopes of landing a biopic deal: https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2021-10-15/zelda-williams-robin-williams-impersonator-test-footage-jamie-costa https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2021... It's not necessarily disgusting by itself, but sending clips to the guy's daughter is very weird.
- deadbabe 1y agoMaybe someday we will grow so tired of AI, that people will leave social media entirely. The most interesting thing about social media, the ability to build real human connections, is quickly becoming a relic of the past. So without that, what is left? Just slop content, rage bait.
- bluefirebrand 1y agoUnfortunately this does mean it becomes hard(er?) to make human connections again Which sucks
- deadbabe 1y agoNot really. We might not be in the golden era of human connections, but you can still find people out there that think the same way somehow and are off grid from social media.
- WorldPeas 1y agoThis is already happening in my immediate surroundings, friends that have long complained of phone addiction are now feeling more able to act on it as it isn't this oasis of escape for them anymore. My only comment there is that they were not ready/didn't remember how bad t9 was for alphabetical inputs, even nostalgia can't cover that unfortunate marriage of convenience.
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- jimbo808 1y agoMy Dad passed away two years ago, and for a time I thought it would be nice to have an AI of him just to hear his voice again, but then I realized that the reason I'd want that is because I don't have really any video or audio of him from when he was alive. The reason I'd want the AI is because I have no training data for it... If I did have sufficient training data for an AI Dad, I'd much rather just listen to the real recordings, rather than some AI slop generated from it. This is just another dumb application of AI that sounds alright on paper, but makes no sense in real life.
- paulbjensen 1y agoI saw that Robin Williams setup a deed to prevent his image or likeness being used for film or publicity that covers a period of up to 25 years after his death. https://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/mar/31/robin-williams-restricted-use-image-despite-existing-us-laws https://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/mar/31/robin-williams-... I don't know if it could be extended further, but I feel like there is merit for it to be considered in this case. In Denmark people own the copyright to their own voice, imagery and likeness: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jun/27/deepfakes-denmark-copyright-law-artificial-intelligence https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jun/27/deepfakes... I think that it is probably the right way to go.
- bloak 1y agoLong-lasting transferable exclusive rights that will inevitably end up being owned by corporations could also be a problem, though, particularly when the lawyers are motivated to interpret them as broadly as possible so that it becomes dangerous to even slightly resemble anyone famous who died less than 70 years ago unless you have paid various licence fees. So I'm not sure it's worth giving up our current freedoms just to avoid some distasteful crap on the internet which I can easily avoid. However, there might be a way of doing it that doesn't create a new category of intellectual property. I think I read about a case that went a bit like this. Parliament created some kind of privacy right. A newspaper asked someone for permission to publish some pictures that could be an invasion of some person's privacy. The person asked for money. The newspaper went ahead and published without permission. The person sued. The newspaper argued in court that if the person was willing to let the pictures be published in return for money then they didn't really care about their privacy. The judge said: it does not seem that the purpose of the legislation was to create a new category of intellectual property so that argument might be valid... I've garbled the details and I'm not sure of the final result but that line of reasoning is interesting, I think.
- Lio 1y agoTo my mind this is no different to other forms of spam or harassment. Back in the 00s I remember friends being sent “slimming club” junk mail on paper made to look like a handwritten note from “a concerned friend”. It was addressed but random. Unfortunately it can be very distressing for those with body image issues. We’re going to have to treat this slop like junk mail as it grows.
- nunez 1y agoFake handwritten mails are still a thing and still get instantly thrown away from me. Anything I'm sent that's AI generated doesn't get read. I realize this will get more difficult as models improve, but I'm standing by this as long as they have that recognizable verbose and agreeable signature
- onetokeoverthe 1y ago[dead]
- nunez 1y agoUnfortunately for Zelda, many social media (ab)users can't/don't read.
- Anamon 1y ago"stop calling it 'the future,' AI is just badly recycling and regurgitating the past to be re-consumed" She has found some very good words to boil down all this AI slop nonsense. I sometimes struggle to explain to non-tech folks why GenAI "art" is and always will be entirely and fundamentally worthless to me. Why I will never waste a second of my time looking at it, and kick it to the bin the moment I notice what it is. She did a better job, the hotdog and centipede create some appropriately gross images.