This ‘Mrs. Doubtfire’ Star Is Threatening to Make Robin Williams the ‘Voice of AI’

Somebody stop Matthew Lawrence before his good-ish intentions become reality.

Lawrence played one of the cute kids Robin Williams didn’t want to lose when he put on a dress and became Mrs. Doubtfire. Now an adult, Lawrence doesn’t want to lose Williams either. Unfortunately, his plan to hold on to cherished memories is to “do something really special” with the voice of the late comedian. 

Do what now? Lawrence’s big idea is to make Williams’ familiar cadence into “the voice of A.I.” 

Yikes! What in the world gave Lawrence such a ghoulish idea? “It’s kinda like this very contemporary, modern, almost sort of foreshadowing of what’s going on in a commercial that he did, where he did this computerized voiceover,” he told Entertainment Weekly last weekend at Comic-Con. 

It’s not clear which commercial Lawrence is referring to — maybe this one Williams did for the iPad?

Or this one for Legend of Zelda?

Whatever ad it was, Williams’ voiceover “always stuck with me,” Lawrence said. “And then, during his passing, with the A.I. coming out, I’m like, ‘Man, he’s gotta be the voice of A.I.”

Er, one problem, Matthew. Williams consented to be the voice of those tech commercials and was likely paid handsomely for them. What makes you think the comedian would want to live on as the voice of unsavory ChatGPT searches? What makes you think his family wants to hear him through the GPS in their cars?

Oh yeah, that. Lawrence is itching to “do something really special with his voice because I know for a generation, that voice is just so iconic,” but he’d only move forward, “obviously, with the respect and with the okay from his family.”

Obviously.

Lawrence isn’t considering a few important facts. First, tons of people hate A.I. resurrecting beloved celebrities from the dead. Williams fans on Reddit, predictably, are 100 percent against the idea:

• “Yes, the person who sued for the use of his voice and image in ways he did not agree to back when A.I. wasn’t a thing yet, sure he would LOVE that he would be used for A.I. purposes…”
• “He would have hated this idea even floating around.”
• “Let that man rest in peace.”

Even more importantly, Robin’s daughter Zelda has already expressed her disgust about A.I. recreating any aspect of her father. “I am not an impartial voice in SAG’s fight against A.I.,” she wrote on Instagram in 2023. “I’ve witnessed for YEARS how many people want to train these models to create/recreate actors who cannot consent, like Dad. This isn’t theoretical, it is very, very real.” 

Zelda can’t stand that A.I. has already recreated Robin’s voice “to say whatever people want,” a practice she finds “personally disturbing.” 

So ask the Williams family for permission, Matthew Lawrence, but you’ve had fair warning. Zelda is on the record about A.I. celebrity recreations as “a horrendous Frankensteinian monster, cobbled together from the worst bits of everything this industry is, instead of what it should stand for.”