Jenna Ortega is speaking out about the rise of explicit AI images.
The “Wednesday” star, 21, revealed in an interview with The New York Times’ “The Interview” podcast that she left X, formerly Twitter, after being sent fake pornographic pictures of herself that were created with AI.
“Did I like being 14 and making a Twitter account because I was supposed to and seeing dirty edited content of me as a child?” she said. “No. It’s terrifying. It’s corrupt. It’s wrong. It’s disgusting.”
The actress, who shared the anecdote after being asked how she feels about AI, continued that she deleted her account due to the influx of “these absurd images and photos” of herself after the release of the Netflix series “Wednesday” in 2022.
“It’s just so repulsive, and I already was in a confused state that I just deleted it because it was unnecessary and I didn’t need that,” she said, adding, “It was just disgusting, and it made me feel bad. It made me feel uncomfortable. It’s awful. Anyway, that’s why I deleted it, because I couldn’t say anything without seeing something like that, and I don’t need to be seeing that every day.”
Ortega also told the Times that the first direct message she opened when she was 12 was an “unsolicited photo of a man’s genitals,” which was “just the beginning of what was to come.” The actress no longer has an official account on X, though she is active on Instagram.
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Earlier this year, a series of sexually explicit AI images of Taylor Swift spread on X, sparking widespread outrage. Many of the photos were removed for violating X’s policies.
After roles on the Disney Channel series “Stuck in the Middle” and in films like “Scream” and “The Fallout,” Ortega achieved greater fame following the release of “Wednesday,” which became a massive hit for Netflix in 2022.
She will next star alongside Michael Keaton and Winona Ryder in “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,” the highly anticipated Tim Burton sequel that hits theaters on Sept. 6.
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Speaking on the “Interview” podcast, Ortega reflected on the pressures of being famous at such a young age.
“I’m so underdeveloped,” she shared. “My prefrontal cortex isn’t even fully there yet, technically, you know? I want to be making the mistakes and learning from them and falling on my face, and maybe the opposite: I want to be extremely confident, and try everything, and do everything, and be the biggest risk taker in the world. There’s a lot more at stake now, whether I like it or not.”
The “Scream VI” star previously opened up about the dark side of social media in an interview as part of Variety’s Actors on Actors series in 2023.
“Social media, what it does to anyone our age, it’s such a comparing game,” she said. “It almost influences bandwagon mentality. … It’s very manipulative.”
