The Distasteful Revival of Robin Williams

From a young Robin Williams, with glasses and an adult jawline sitting in an armchair, to 'inspirational messages' from the actor staring at the camera with a certain stiffness in his face. These are short videos circulating online, generated by artificial intelligence (AI). This presence is constant and freshly made, despite the fact that the great performer, who portrayed memorable characters from the alien Mork to the professor in 'Dead Poets Society', took his own life over a decade ago. The appropriation of a real person's identity, even if deceased, is an ethical issue yet to be resolved in the era of advanced and easy technology, but it leaves a mark on their loved ones.

Last week, the actor's daughter, Zelda Williams, asked people to stop sending her fake videos of her father. 'Please stop sending me AI-generated videos of dad. Stop believing I want to see it or that I will understand it, I don't and I won't. If you're just trying to troll me, I've seen much worse, I'll recover and move on. But please, if you have any decency, stop. Doing this to him and to me, even to everyone, is foolish, a waste of time and energy, and, believe me, it's not what he would have wanted,' she wrote in an Instagram story the previous Monday.

The text, now gone due to the ephemeral nature of such posts on the app, continued: 'It's frustrating to see how the legacy of real people is condensed into 'this looks and sounds vaguely like them, so it's enough', just so others can produce horrible TikTok trash, manipulating them. You're not making art, you're creating disgusting, ultra-processed hot dogs with the lives of human beings, with the history of art and music, and then force-feeding them to someone hoping for a small nod of approval and a like. Disgusting.'

Any user has access to specific applications to 'bring your loved ones back to life' or 'talk to the dead'. They are promoted with tags like 'emotional technology' or 'digital mourning', and position brands like Euvola or Griefbots, which copy or mimic the traits, gestures, and voice of the original models. Not with total precision, but with some verisimilitude, free technologies like 'faceswap' can make the dead 'speak'. The issue is that they are not used to overcome grief, if such a false connection can do so. It has become a matter of memes and likes. From parody to grotesque.

In this case, Williams took his life at the age of 63, affected by depression and contradicting some of the characters he played, full of joy and gags. For at least two years, unauthorized content of the actor has been growing exponentially, at the same rate as fake celebrity pornography. At that time, his daughter, also an actress and film director, expressed her bewilderment. When the anniversary of her father's death came, she asked fans to understand her for not responding to condolences. 'Even roses weigh a ton when left in trucks.' Now, the tone changes and the beloved Williams' daughter concluded her recent exhortation by denouncing these automatically generated creations: 'AI only recycles and regurgitates the past to be consumed again.'