Jenna Ortega’s aversion to artificial intelligence stems from a disturbing experience in her early days as a child star. She received doctored, explicit photos of herself, which she found “repulsive” and “terrifying.”
Jenna Ortega FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP via Getty Images
In a recent interview, Ortega, 21, expressed her concerns about the dark side of AI technology. “I hate AI,” she said. “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.”
However, Ortega’s experience with AI has been marred by the creation and dissemination of explicit, doctored images of herself as a child. “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. It’s disgusting,” she said.
Ortega’s rise to fame began with roles on Jane the Virgin and Disney Channel’s Stuck in the Middle when she was just a preteen. Around the same time, she received her first direct message, which was an unsolicited photo of a man’s genitals. This was just the beginning of a series of disturbing messages and images that would continue to haunt her.
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Ortega eventually deleted her Twitter account due to the constant barrage of disturbing messages and images. “It made me feel uncomfortable,” she recalled. “Anyway, that’s why I deleted [my account] 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.'” She deleted her account about two to three years ago.
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Ortega noted that after Wednesday premiered, she received even more doctored images based on her character. “I already was in a confused state that I just deleted it,” she said.
Ortega is now focused on protecting herself from the negative effects of social media. “I’m learning to take time for myself, whether that’s taking time to avoid my phone or giving myself the space to acknowledge my feelings,” she said.
As a 21-year-old, Ortega acknowledges the pressures of living in the public eye. “It feels scary regardless. … It’s a time where you can’t appreciate where you’re at now [when] you’re learning to pay bills for the first time, dealing with taxes [and] being expected to be an adult. [You can’t] not be scared s—tless. That’s just a given,” she said.
