Jenna Ortega Deleted Twitter After Receiving Explicit AI Images of Herself
Actress Jenna Ortega has revealed she quit Twitter after being sent explicit AI-generated images of herself.
In a New York Times interview, Ortega reveals she left the platform, now called X, after being sent unsolicited messages of a sexual nature when she was still a child.
“One of the first — actually the first DM that 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,” Ortega says.
“I used to have that Twitter account and I was told that, Oh, you got to do it, you got to build your image. I ended up deleting it about two, three years ago because the influx after the show had come out — these absurd images and photos, and I already was in a confused state that I just deleted it.”
The show Ortega refers to is Wednesday in which she plays the titular character Wednesday Adams. It was a huge hit on Netflix.
The revelation came up after Ortega was asked about her thoughts about artificial intelligence.
“I mean, here’s the thing: AI could be used for incredible things,” Ortega tells The Times.
“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. 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 says the experience was “disgusting” and made her feel bad and uncomfortable.
“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,” she adds.
A Modern Problem
The advancement of imaging generative AI platforms has meant bad actors can manipulate the software to create sexual images of people using just a photo of them.
The situation prompted the Internet Watch Foundation to issue an urgent warning last year amid reports of schoolboys making deepfake nude photographs of their female classmates at a high school in the U.S.
In March, Facebook and Instagram ran ads that featured a blurred deepfake nude image of an underage Jenna Ortega to promote an AI app.
Image credits: Header photo licensed via Depositphotos.
