Robin Williams' daughter Zelda Williams called out a fake AI video of her father on September 21, 2026, telling whoever made it to "have some shame." It's not the first time: she made a similar plea in October 2025, and revived her father's Instagram account this August to fight "rampant AI abuse of his voice and likeness." George Carlin's daughter says she gets daily emails about AI clips of her late father. It's not just these two families, either: in 2025, fake AI videos of Martin Luther King Jr. got so disrespectful that OpenAI paused his likeness at his estate's request. Congress now has a bill on the table, the NO FAKES Act, that would let people and their estates sue over unauthorized AI replicas. It cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously in June 2026 and is waiting on a full Senate vote.

1. Families Want It Stopped, Not Just Regulated (Zelda Williams, Kelly Carlin-McCall, the King Estate)

Losing someone doesn't mean losing control over how the world remembers them.

A dead parent isn't a puppet. Zelda Williams called out a viral "private" clip of her father as "clearly AI, and not even particularly convincing AI," and told whoever made it to "have some shame."

This has been going on for almost a year. She made the same plea in October 2025, then in August 2026 revived her father's Instagram account specifically to fight what she called "rampant AI abuse of his voice and likeness."

Other families are dealing with the same problem. George Carlin's daughter, Kelly Carlin-McCall, says she gets daily emails about AI clips of her father: "We are doing our best to combat it, but it's overwhelming, and depressing."

The King family escalated to an actual platform ban. After AI users made racist-sounding fake clips of Martin Luther King Jr., his daughter Bernice A. King asked OpenAI to stop. OpenAI paused its tool's ability to generate his likeness entirely.

2. Hollywood and Labor Want a Law With Teeth (SAG-AFTRA, the RIAA, Sens. Blackburn and Coons)

Platform-by-platform pauses aren't enough. This needs to be federal law.

An opt-out request shouldn't be the only option. Senators Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and Chris Coons (D-DE) reintroduced the NO FAKES Act in May 2026. It creates a federal right against unauthorized AI replicas of a person's voice or likeness, one that survives death for more than 70 years. Violators could face damages up to $750,000.

The performers' union is behind it. SAG-AFTRA, the RIAA, the Motion Picture Association, and the AFL-CIO all backed the revised bill, alongside tech companies including OpenAI, IBM, TikTok, and Getty Images.

It's already cleared one hurdle. The Senate Judiciary Committee passed the bill by unanimous vote on June 18, 2026, and it's been sitting on the Senate calendar since. Over the summer, Sen. Blackburn was reportedly negotiating to bundle it with the Kids Online Safety Act and a federal age-verification mandate, in exchange for a moratorium on state AI laws. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), KOSA's own co-author, opposed that pairing.

3. Free-Speech Groups Say the Bill Overreaches (ACLU, EFF, R Street Foundation, FIRE)

The bill could hurt satire, parody, and education more than it helps stop deepfakes.

A takedown demand shouldn't be able to erase lawful speech. The same day the bill cleared committee, the ACLU, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Center for Democracy and Technology, and the R Street Foundation wrote to the Senate Judiciary Committee warning it creates a "heckler's veto" over lawful satire, parody, and education.

One example shows what's at risk. The coalition said that under the bill's posthumous term, the viral meme of Pope Francis in a Balenciaga jacket would stay illegal to share until the year 2100.

Teachers and historians could get hurt by the bill too. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression warned an earlier draft could expose a teacher to "thousands of dollars in damages" for using AI-generated historical reenactments in class, and could chill "documentarians patching gaps in archival footage." Its argument: "Creativity cannot thrive under constant permission. New mediums shouldn't mean new muzzles."

Where This Lands

Families like the Williamses and the Carlins want the AI replicas of their dead relatives to stop. The entertainment industry and its unions agree, and got a bill through committee to make that enforceable. Civil-liberties groups think the deepfakes are a real problem too, but their objection is that this fix is too broad — it reaches satire, parody, and classroom history lessons along with it. The NO FAKES Act cleared committee in June and hasn't moved since. It's reportedly tangled up in a bigger fight over kids' online safety and state AI law, with no Senate floor vote scheduled.

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