(NewsNation) — In a recent interview, “Wednesday” star Jenna Ortega revealed she quit X, the former Twitter, after seeing AI-generated explicit images of herself as a teenager.
“I hate AI,” Ortega said in an interview with The New York Times. “I mean, here’s the thing: AI could be used for incredible things. I think I saw something the other day where they were saying that artificial intelligence was able to detect breast cancer four years before it progressed. That’s beautiful. Let’s keep it to that.”
Ortega, who began her Hollywood career on the Disney Channel, says she was subjected to explicit content from the moment she joined social media.
“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,” Ortega said.
“The first [direct message] 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,” she said. Ortega says she was also sent AI-generated child pornography of herself.
Ortega, now 21, says the influx of “absurd images” got so bad after the hit show “Wednesday” came out in 2022 that she decided to delete her X account altogether.
She remains on Instagram and tells the Times that she is still learning how to protect herself.