I remember being stunned by Mork from Ork. Then watched as the same guy grew into one of the most iconic and loved humans on Earth. Given the amount of brain share that he earned it's kind of inevitable that so many people try to bring him back. I hope his daughter can also feel the love in it.
1. You appreciate Robin Williams and were he here right now judging you for how you honor his memory, would he approve?
2. Robin Williams is not here, or anywhere, so then if he were would he approve of you bringing pain to someone he loved dearly? Why would you do that to Robin Williams?
3. Robin Williams is not here, or anywhere, so then nothing matters and I bet I could get some views.
It's difficult to see love in these acts when they seem to be fundamentally selfish. Not at all what Robin Williams would do.
Should one not be free to invoke the visages of Einstein, Socrates, Julius Caesar, Jesus Christ (whichever version - and there are so many!), Genghis Khan, Confucius, et al.?
What about when poking fun at Hitler, such as Kung Fury and Jojo Rabbit do? Off limits?
Can one paint Bob Ross in a sci-fi setting? Is that unethical? Is it okay so long as a "real" artist does it and not an "AI artist"? Or can we seriously never depict him again because someone might get angry?
"Mr. Rogers in a blood-stained sweater"?
Come on!
And we can't animate Bruce Lee? Or put him on stickers? Or have him in new movies? (Nevermind how Quentin Tarantino did him wrong.)
When I grew up Elvis effigies were everywhere. And I mean everywhere. The people who liked this stuff are mostly dead or retired now so you don't see it as much, but it used to be a big deal. Really big deal.
So we can't do that anymore?
Abraham Lincoln hunts vampires for Christ's sake...
I'm glad you're asking. If you notice no one has said, especially Zelda, that you can't do these things. Obviously you can. You have access to a computer. The question you should be asking is should you do these things?
Also, this a good list of false equivalences. Robin Williams, when public, was empathetic, emotional, and arguably humanist. His memory isn't a caricature from people who have never known him, as you would see from Star Trek holo-deck episodes featuring Leonardo Da Vanci. His memory is something that is deeply important to people who are living. Some of those people simply appreciated his art and his behavior. One of those people is his daughter. You don't get to say what is right or wrong here. No one's going to stop you if you want to make a video of Robin Williams taking the Siegfried Oath, but you should understand why it is wrong.
Doesn’t the should part just completely ignore how we all know the world actually works which is kind of its own form of insanity. We humans can’t be trusted to follow basic rules like traffic laws. Right and wrong cease to matter much when 1) I want to be selfish and do what I please and 2) there’s technically nobody being harmed, feelings aside. But even then, from a net perspective, there’s probably many more people getting enjoyment from these AI videos than the people who are saddened by them.
It sucks for Zelda this saddens her so much, but if I were in her shoes it’s something I know I can’t control and so I’d try to embrace or ignore it.
Haven't seen the videos, but she seems to complain of videos claiming to be authentic private videos of him stating a particular political message — and of these videos being forwarded to her (possibly for verification?).
This has nothing to do with impersonating a deceases person but about rewriting (personal) history she finds shameful.
These arguments seem so quaint, like reading a letter from WW2. We live in the AI age! Wake up people, these things are happening and will not ever stop, we are not going back.
No. Just because lots of people do a thing does not make it acceptable, and "people are going to keep doing it" is not a valid reason to not try to stop it.
Someone in the past probably said something similar:
"glove slap I demand satisfaction. Pistols at dawn. This is how we settle problems and there's no going back now." God made man and Colt made them equal, yes?
The current usage of AI is similarly unrefined and out of hand.
Robin Williams himself famously did humorous impersonations of recently-deceased celebrities and politicians. He was an irreverent comedian. You guys need to relax.
It's actually not the Streisand effect. The Streisand effect is about trying to smother a controversy and, in the process, breathing life into it.
Zelda is not exercising power or suppressing a controversy. This is just old fashioned dickheadedness. A generous interpretation would be juvenile trolling since they know their mark is vulnerable.
Typically a Streisand effect involves filing a lawsuit to try to stop something, which then raises awareness more broadly and makes the problem you’re suing to correct worse. In the canonical example, it’s “everyone stop taking pictures of my house!”, now pictures of your house are everywhere.
With a reasonably more generous definition, this case can indeed be considered a Streisand effect, if the problem gets worse by calling attention to it because now more idiots know about it. But a lawsuit would seal the deal!
She has now asked three times, in 2023 about his voice, in 2025 about the videos, and again today. What changed between them is not the technology, it is what she is asking for. The first time it was stop. Now it is have some shame. That is someone who has worked out there is nobody to appeal to, only an audience, and asking an audience for restraint has never scaled. The enforcement falls on the family, personally, every round, because it does not fall on anyone else.
Zelda Williams is getting the AI videos forwarded to her by fans.
People who are Robin Williams fans aren't making AI videos of him.
The kind of people who are making videos of him are people trying to get engagement on social media.
Either building an audience to then be an "influencer", or to sell the account to a marketing firm who will then use it to kickstart an online brand.
Marketing company has a client with some stupid new kitchen gadget, so they buy a pumped up account that had Robin Williams memes intermixed with some stolen baking/cooking cartoons and memes.
The video Robin's daughter referenced in her tweet is being circulated as a "private video" of him. In other words, people are claiming it's a real video, or being led to believe it's a real video. It's not and therefore this isn't some misguided AI-generated act of love. It's deception, almost certainly to garner and possibly monetize "attention".
Unfortunately, AI content creators have no shame, and neither do social media content curation algorithms; in the current configuration of the world, those two entities form a closed loop that produces and serves this shameful content to unwilling bystanders. From a God’s-eye perspective it is easy to say “we should change this system so this doesn’t happen”, but from within the system each participant can only say “let us follow our incentives to become slightly more rich than other participants” (and any entity that might’ve once held a God’s-eye view along with the power to make such a change has long since abdicated their role).
It is decent microcosm of the state of the world if you’re looking to understand why younger generations seem so fatalistically, nihilistically depressed - they are simply aware that nobody can break these vicious cycles.
Otherwise, you're right. A system where the selection pressure happens through money and attention is bound to devolve to appeal to the strongest most primitive of desires.
Before this article I wasn't even aware but 100% there's going to be a huge increase in Robin Williams AI saying/doing whack shit just like all the other AI footage of famous people.
If you are publicly famous, your image no longer is owned by you, especially true with AI now.
The struggle is real:
2025:
Robin Williams' daughter pleads for people to stop sending AI videos of her dad
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45505626
2023:
Robin Williams’ daughter Zelda slams AI for recreating her father’s voice
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37742529
4chan and Twitter: "Define shame"
I remember being stunned by Mork from Ork. Then watched as the same guy grew into one of the most iconic and loved humans on Earth. Given the amount of brain share that he earned it's kind of inevitable that so many people try to bring him back. I hope his daughter can also feel the love in it.
But shazbot to anyone who goes rule 34 on him.
There's a few different ways to look at this.
1. You appreciate Robin Williams and were he here right now judging you for how you honor his memory, would he approve?
2. Robin Williams is not here, or anywhere, so then if he were would he approve of you bringing pain to someone he loved dearly? Why would you do that to Robin Williams?
3. Robin Williams is not here, or anywhere, so then nothing matters and I bet I could get some views.
It's difficult to see love in these acts when they seem to be fundamentally selfish. Not at all what Robin Williams would do.
Perfectly stated. Thank you.
"Love is the most selfish of all the passions." — Alexandre Dumas
Should one not be free to invoke the visages of Einstein, Socrates, Julius Caesar, Jesus Christ (whichever version - and there are so many!), Genghis Khan, Confucius, et al.?
What about when poking fun at Hitler, such as Kung Fury and Jojo Rabbit do? Off limits?
Can one paint Bob Ross in a sci-fi setting? Is that unethical? Is it okay so long as a "real" artist does it and not an "AI artist"? Or can we seriously never depict him again because someone might get angry?
"Mr. Rogers in a blood-stained sweater"?
Come on!
And we can't animate Bruce Lee? Or put him on stickers? Or have him in new movies? (Nevermind how Quentin Tarantino did him wrong.)
When I grew up Elvis effigies were everywhere. And I mean everywhere. The people who liked this stuff are mostly dead or retired now so you don't see it as much, but it used to be a big deal. Really big deal.
So we can't do that anymore?
Abraham Lincoln hunts vampires for Christ's sake...
I'm glad you're asking. If you notice no one has said, especially Zelda, that you can't do these things. Obviously you can. You have access to a computer. The question you should be asking is should you do these things?
Also, this a good list of false equivalences. Robin Williams, when public, was empathetic, emotional, and arguably humanist. His memory isn't a caricature from people who have never known him, as you would see from Star Trek holo-deck episodes featuring Leonardo Da Vanci. His memory is something that is deeply important to people who are living. Some of those people simply appreciated his art and his behavior. One of those people is his daughter. You don't get to say what is right or wrong here. No one's going to stop you if you want to make a video of Robin Williams taking the Siegfried Oath, but you should understand why it is wrong.
Doesn’t the should part just completely ignore how we all know the world actually works which is kind of its own form of insanity. We humans can’t be trusted to follow basic rules like traffic laws. Right and wrong cease to matter much when 1) I want to be selfish and do what I please and 2) there’s technically nobody being harmed, feelings aside. But even then, from a net perspective, there’s probably many more people getting enjoyment from these AI videos than the people who are saddened by them.
It sucks for Zelda this saddens her so much, but if I were in her shoes it’s something I know I can’t control and so I’d try to embrace or ignore it.
Haven't seen the videos, but she seems to complain of videos claiming to be authentic private videos of him stating a particular political message — and of these videos being forwarded to her (possibly for verification?).
This has nothing to do with impersonating a deceases person but about rewriting (personal) history she finds shameful.
These arguments seem so quaint, like reading a letter from WW2. We live in the AI age! Wake up people, these things are happening and will not ever stop, we are not going back.
No. Just because lots of people do a thing does not make it acceptable, and "people are going to keep doing it" is not a valid reason to not try to stop it.
It’s never too late to start being a decent person to your fellow human.
Someone in the past probably said something similar:
"glove slap I demand satisfaction. Pistols at dawn. This is how we settle problems and there's no going back now." God made man and Colt made them equal, yes?
The current usage of AI is similarly unrefined and out of hand.
Robin Williams himself famously did humorous impersonations of recently-deceased celebrities and politicians. He was an irreverent comedian. You guys need to relax.
Yeah… he did them. He didn’t tell a computer to mock up a realdoll of them and share it for clicks.
Yes. He did it. In person. Putting in, you know, actual work and character studies.
Since you mentioned love, I have a question for you:
Would people still make AI videos of him like this if the attention economy didn’t exist or clicks wouldn’t generate money?
I hate to break it to you, but I think the genie from Aladdin counts.
The irony here is that this article is now a giant invitation to everyone else who just found out about this to pile on and do the exact opposite
It's called the Streisand effect - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect
It's actually not the Streisand effect. The Streisand effect is about trying to smother a controversy and, in the process, breathing life into it.
Zelda is not exercising power or suppressing a controversy. This is just old fashioned dickheadedness. A generous interpretation would be juvenile trolling since they know their mark is vulnerable.
Typically a Streisand effect involves filing a lawsuit to try to stop something, which then raises awareness more broadly and makes the problem you’re suing to correct worse. In the canonical example, it’s “everyone stop taking pictures of my house!”, now pictures of your house are everywhere.
With a reasonably more generous definition, this case can indeed be considered a Streisand effect, if the problem gets worse by calling attention to it because now more idiots know about it. But a lawsuit would seal the deal!
Yeah, if you’re a complete sociopath.
Not necessarily, anonymity enables a lot of interesting behaviors. I see it all the time on HN.
She has now asked three times, in 2023 about his voice, in 2025 about the videos, and again today. What changed between them is not the technology, it is what she is asking for. The first time it was stop. Now it is have some shame. That is someone who has worked out there is nobody to appeal to, only an audience, and asking an audience for restraint has never scaled. The enforcement falls on the family, personally, every round, because it does not fall on anyone else.
Zelda Williams is getting the AI videos forwarded to her by fans.
People who are Robin Williams fans aren't making AI videos of him.
The kind of people who are making videos of him are people trying to get engagement on social media.
Either building an audience to then be an "influencer", or to sell the account to a marketing firm who will then use it to kickstart an online brand.
Marketing company has a client with some stupid new kitchen gadget, so they buy a pumped up account that had Robin Williams memes intermixed with some stolen baking/cooking cartoons and memes.
It's always about money...
Are people here not even reading the article?
The video Robin's daughter referenced in her tweet is being circulated as a "private video" of him. In other words, people are claiming it's a real video, or being led to believe it's a real video. It's not and therefore this isn't some misguided AI-generated act of love. It's deception, almost certainly to garner and possibly monetize "attention".
Unfortunately, AI content creators have no shame, and neither do social media content curation algorithms; in the current configuration of the world, those two entities form a closed loop that produces and serves this shameful content to unwilling bystanders. From a God’s-eye perspective it is easy to say “we should change this system so this doesn’t happen”, but from within the system each participant can only say “let us follow our incentives to become slightly more rich than other participants” (and any entity that might’ve once held a God’s-eye view along with the power to make such a change has long since abdicated their role).
It is decent microcosm of the state of the world if you’re looking to understand why younger generations seem so fatalistically, nihilistically depressed - they are simply aware that nobody can break these vicious cycles.
FTFY.
Otherwise, you're right. A system where the selection pressure happens through money and attention is bound to devolve to appeal to the strongest most primitive of desires.
This lady needs some proper advice on this. She is only digging this hole deeper by feeding it attention.
Before this article I wasn't even aware but 100% there's going to be a huge increase in Robin Williams AI saying/doing whack shit just like all the other AI footage of famous people.
If you are publicly famous, your image no longer is owned by you, especially true with AI now.