Jenna Ortega said she shut down her X (then Twitter) account after a “large number” of explicit images were posted to it.
Ortega, 21, made the comments during a recent conversation on The New York Times podcast, “The Interview.”
During the chat, she opened up about her feelings about artificial intelligence, saying that X had previously sent her an AI-generated image of herself as a child.
“I hate AI,” Ortega said when asked for his opinion on the emerging technology, which can be used to create realistic images and videos, including deepfake porn.
“Did you, at 14, create a Twitter account because you had to and enjoy looking at salacious edited content of yourself as a child? No. It's horrifying. It's corrupting. It's wrong,” she said.
The former child actor, who rose to fame after appearing in the Disney Channel soap opera “Stuck in the Middle” and the CW comedy “Jane the Virgin,” said she was told to join Twitter to help improve her image.
Jenna Ortega rose to fame as a child star on Disney Channel's “Stuck in the Middle.” Eric McCandless/Disney Channel via Getty Images
“One of the first direct messages I ever opened on my own, when I was 12, was an unsolicited photo of a man's genitals, and that was just the beginning of what was to come,” she added.
Ortega said she deleted the app “about two or three years ago” because she was being bombarded with “ridiculous images and photos.”
“It was disgusting, it made me feel bad, it made me feel uncomfortable,” she continued. “Anyway, I couldn't say anything without seeing that stuff, so I deleted it.”
Ortega is not the first person to be targeted by those producing and distributing realistic AI porn.
Earlier this year, Taylor Swift's likeness was used in a series of sexually explicit posts that went viral on X.
As a safety precaution, X has decided to temporarily halt the search for the singer.
“The posting of non-consensual nudity (NCN) images is strictly prohibited on X and we have a zero-tolerance policy towards such content,” the company said in a statement at the time.
“Our teams are proactively removing all identified images and taking appropriate action against the accounts who posted them,” it added.
The case has sparked calls for new legislation to combat the threat posed by deepfakes.
In 2023, Democratic Rep. Joseph Morrell proposed a bill that would make it a crime to knowingly share or threaten to share a digitally altered image of an individual engaging in sexually explicit conduct.
The bill, titled the “Prevent Deepfake Intimate Imagery Act,” has been referred to the House Judiciary Committee, but has not yet taken any further action.
“We have seen the devastating impact that deepfake imagery has on everyone from young schoolgirls to global celebrities,” Morell said of the case. “We have a responsibility to take decisive action to stop these heinous crimes.”
