Jenna Ortega is opening up about her personal experience with the negative side of artificial intelligence.
During a recent conversation on The Interview podcast for The New York Times, the Wednesday star recalled a disturbing encounter she had on social media as a teen that led her to shut down her Twitter, now known as X, account.
“I hate AI,” she said. “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? No. It’s terrifying. It’s corrupt. It’s wrong.”
In addition to seeing AI-generated pornographic images of herself as a teen, she said her first DM “that I ever opened myself when I was 12 was an unsolicited photo of a man’s genitals, and that was just the beginning of what was to come.”
“I used to have that Twitter account and I was told that, ‘Oh, you got to do it, you got to build your image,’” Ortega explained. “I ended up deleting it about two, three years ago because the influx after the show [Wednesday] had come out — these absurd images and photos, and I already was in a confused state that I just deleted it.”
The Beetlejuice Beetlejuice actress said the “disgusting” photos made her feel “bad” and “uncomfortable,” which is “why I deleted it, because I couldn’t say anything without seeing something like that. So one day I just woke up, and I thought, Oh, I don’t need this anymore. So I dropped it.”
Ortega, 21, admitted that she’s still learning how to protect herself, especially in a career where there are eyes on her most of the time. One way that has helped is by avoiding “the phone as much as I can.”
“I’m always walking,” she noted. “If you’re ever wondering what I’m doing, if my parents are ever wondering, if I’m not at work, or in some sort of meeting, I am outside doing laps. I am in a random garden, I am laying, taking a nap in a field.”
The Scream VI actress added, “I’m really working on not being so self-critical or just killing myself over things that in the grand scheme of the world with the news and things you see, it’s really just not important at all. I should be having so much fun right now. So much fun! And I don’t. And I should. And I try to remind myself of that.”
