Jenna Ortega revealed that she deleted her Twitter account after receiving AI-generated direct messages with pornographic images of her as a child.
Speaking to The New York Times ahead of the release of Beetlejuice and the second season of Netflix's Wednesday, Ortega reflected on growing up in the spotlight and exploring her identity as a young woman in Hollywood. In Taika Waititi's film adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro's novel, Klara and the Sun, in which she plays a robot of the same name, Ortega said her experience with artificial intelligence was “terrifying.”
“I hate AI,” she said. “The truth is, AI could be used for amazing things. I think I saw the other day that artificial intelligence could detect breast cancer four years before it developed. That's amazing. Let's just leave it at that. Did I create a Twitter account when I was 14 because I had to, and love looking at salacious edited content of myself as a child? No. It's horrifying. It's corrupting. It's wrong.”
Prompted by the interviewer to elaborate, the “Scream” star said the first direct message he opened, aged 12, “was an unsolicited photo of a man's genitals, and that was just the beginning of what was to come.”
The Emmy-nominated performer continued, “I used to have a Twitter account, but I was like, 'Oh, you should give it a go and create an image for yourself.' I ended up getting a ton of ridiculous images and photos of myself on it after the show ended, so I deleted it a couple of years ago. It was already a mess, so I deleted it.”
She added: “It was disgusting, it made me feel bad, and I just couldn't say anything without seeing that stuff, so I deleted it. Then I woke up one day and I was like, 'Oh, I don't want this anymore,' so I deleted it.”
According to The Washington Post, the barrier to creating realistic AI pornography (known as deepfake porn) is lower than ever, which is of particular concern to women, who are often the targets of manipulated and fake images and subject to harassment. The issue has also affected Twitch streamers and stars like Taylor Swift, but legislation to regulate the use of AI has been slow.
