Jenna Ortega has stated that she closed her X-account (then Twitter) after being confronted with a “flood” of explicit images on the platform.
Ortega, 21, made the remarks during a recent interview on The New York Times podcast “The Interview.”
During the chat, she talked about her feelings about artificial intelligence and said that she had already been sent AI-generated images of herself as a child on X.
“I hate AI,” Ortega said when asked about her opinion on the new technology that can create realistic images and videos, including deepfake pornography.
“Did I enjoy opening a Twitter account at 14 because I was supposed to and seeing dirty, edited content of myself as a child? No. It’s horrifying. It’s corrupt. It’s wrong,” she said.
The former child actress, who rose to fame through her roles in the Disney Channel series “Stuck in the Middle” and the CW comedy “Jane the Virgin,” said she was told she had to join Twitter to build her image.
Jenna Ortega rose to fame as a child star in “Stuck in the Middle” on the Disney Channel. Eric McCandless/Disney Channel via Getty Images
“One of the first – actually the first DM I 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 added.
Ortega said she eventually deleted the app “about two or three years ago” because she received a “flood” of “absurd images and photos.”
“It was disgusting and I felt bad. I felt uncomfortable,” she continued. “Anyway, that’s why I deleted it because I couldn’t say anything without seeing something like that.”
Ortega is not the first person to be targeted by those who create and distribute realistic AI porn.
Earlier this year, Taylor Swift’s image was used in a series of sexually explicit posts that went viral on X.
For security reasons, X finally temporarily blocked the search for the singer.
In a statement at the time, the company said: “Posting images of non-consensual nudity (NCN) is strictly prohibited on X and we have a zero-tolerance policy towards such content.”
“Our teams are actively removing all identified images and taking appropriate action against the accounts responsible for posting them,” it said.
The incident led to calls for new laws to combat the threat of deepfakes.
In 2023, Democratic Representative Joseph Morelle proposed a bill that would criminalize the intentional sharing of digitally altered images of a person engaging in sexually explicit conduct, or the threat of sharing.
The bill, titled Preventing Deepfakes of Intimate Images Act, has been referred to the House Judiciary Committee, but no further action has been taken so far.
“We have seen the devastating impact that intimate deepfake images have had on everyone from young schoolgirls to global celebrities,” Morelle said on the issue. “We have a responsibility to take decisive action to put an end to these heinous crimes.”
