No, Robin Williams doesn’t ‘gotta be the voice of AI’

Whoa, it’s already an August edition of Popculturology. Happy Friday, I guess. Hopefully you’re staying cool. Or dry. Who knows what the weather is going to do in 2025, huh?

Speaking of end of days, are you worried about the potentially hostile interstellar object heading our way? Or, like me, are you assuming the radioactive bees nest will take care of things?

Keep Robin Williams out of your AI

Matthew Lawrence, the former Boy Meets World star, incurred the wrath of good people everywhere this past week after boldly declaring that he “would love to do something really special with [Robin Williams’] voice” and make the late actor the “voice of AI.”

First off, what? And second, why? And third, gross.

“I would love — now, obviously, with the respect and with the OK from his family — but I would love to do something really special with his voice because I know for a generation, that voice is just so iconic,” Lawrence told Entertainment Weekly last week during Comic-Con.

“It’s kinda like this very contemporary, modern, almost sort of foreshadowing of what’s going on commercial that he did, where he did this computerized voiceover,” he continued. “And it always stuck with me. And then, during his passing, with the AI coming out, I’m like, ‘Man, he’s gotta be the voice of AI. He’s gotta be the voice in something.’ So yeah, I would love to do that.”

No.

No, Robin Williams doesn’t “gotta be the voice of AI.” What’s wrong with you? How can you claim to have loved someone, to have seen them as a mentor and an idol ... and then want to turn them into something as lifeless as generative AI?