Actor Jenna Ortega revealed in a new New York Times interview published over the weekend that she deleted the social media platform X/Twitter several years ago after seeing pornographic AI-generated images of herself when she was a minor.
“I hate AI,” Ortega, now 21, told The Times, while also conceding that the technology “could be used for incredible things.”
“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,” she said. “It’s terrifying. It’s corrupt. It’s wrong.”
The “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” star likened AI to Pandora’s box, saying, “It’s out there now. We’re gonna have to deal with the consequences.”
“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 continued. She also shared that the surge in unsolicited “absurd images and photos” she received after her show “Wednesday” aired in 2022 prompted her to terminate her X account altogether. “It was disgusting, and it made me feel bad. It made me feel uncomfortable,” she said. “Anyway, that’s 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.”