Jenna Ortega has been speaking out about the rise in explicit AI imagery.
The 21-year-old “Wednesday” star revealed during an interview with The New York Times podcast “The Interview” that she quit X (formerly Twitter) after being sent fake, AI-generated pornographic images.
“Would I have liked being a 14-year-old and creating a Twitter account because I had to and looking at salacious edited content of myself as a child?” she said. “No. It’s horrifying. It’s corrupting. It’s wrong. It’s disgusting.”
The actress, who shared the anecdote after being asked how she felt about AI, went on to say that after the release of her Netflix series “Wednesday” in 2022, she deleted her account after it was flooded with “ridiculous images and photos” of her.
“It was really gross and I was already in a state of chaos so I deleted it because it was unnecessary and I didn’t need it,” she said, adding, “It was just gross and made me feel bad. It was uncomfortable. It was awful. Anyway, I deleted it because I have no say in it unless I see it. I don’t need to see it every day.”
Need a break? Play the USA TODAY Daily Crossword Puzzle.
Ortega also told the Times that the first direct message he opened, when he was 12, was “an unsolicited photo of a man’s genitals,” and that it was “just the beginning of what was to come.” Ortega no longer has an official X account, but is active on Instagram.
Jenna OrtegaShe played an iconic “Addams Family” outsider in Netflix’s “Wednesday”
Earlier this year, a series of sexually explicit AI images of Taylor Swift were shared on X, sparking outrage. Many of the photos were subsequently removed for violating X’s policies.
After appearing in the Disney Channel series “Stuck in the Middle” and films such as “Scream” and “Fallout,” Ortega gained further fame in 2022 with the release of Netflix’s smash hit “Wednesday.”
She will next star opposite Michael Keaton and Winona Ryder in Tim Burton’s highly anticipated sequel, Beetlejuice, which hits theaters on September 6th.
Jenna OrtegaShe talks about the age gap controversy with Martin Freeman in ‘Miller’s Girl’
On the “Interview” podcast, Ortega reflected on the pressures of becoming famous at a young age.
“I’m underdeveloped,” she said, “technically speaking, my frontal lobe isn’t fully developed yet. I want to fail and learn from it, fail and vice versa, be super confident, try everything, do everything, be the biggest risk taker in the world. There’s a lot more at stake right now, whether you like it or not.”
The Scream 6 star previously spoke about the dark side of social media in a 2023 interview with Variety as part of their Actor vs. Actor series.
“Social media influences people our age in a kind of comparison game,” she says. “It almost influences a bandwagon mentality. … It’s very manipulative.”
Contributor: Edward Segara
