Jenna Ortega quits Twitter after receiving 'disgusting' messages and explicit photos of herself taken by AI when she was a teenager

“It’s terrifying. It’s corrupt. It’s wrong,” the “Wednesday” star said.

Jenna Ortega opens up about the dark side of child fame she experienced in the age of social media.

THE Beetlejuice Beetlejuice The actress, who began her career at the age of 9, has opened up about the moment she encountered disturbing AI-generated content using her image – and she didn't mince words about the effect it had on her.

“I hate AI,” she said. The New York Times in the last episode of The interview podcast. “I mean, here’s the thing: AI could be used for incredible things. I think I saw something the other day where they said that artificial intelligence could detect breast cancer four years before it progresses. That’s amazing. Let’s leave it at that.”

But, she continued, “Did I enjoy being 14 and creating a Twitter account because I was supposed to and seeing crude, edited content of me as a child? No. It’s terrifying. It’s corrupt. It’s wrong.”

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Ortega compared this technology to “Pandora's box”: “It's already here. We're going to have to deal with the consequences.”

The star added that she had already encountered explicit content even before the recent deluge of AI-generated images. “One of the first messages I ever sent myself, at 12 years old, was an unsolicited photo of a man’s genitals,” she said. “And that was just the beginning of what was to come.”

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She then explained her decision to deactivate her X account (formerly Twitter) following the success of her Netflix series Wednesday.

“I had a Twitter account and I was told, ‘Oh, you have to do this, you have to build your image,’” she said. “I ended up deleting it two or three years ago because of the influx after the show came out, these absurd images and photos, and I was already in such a state of confusion that I just deleted it.”

She said of the messages: “It was disgusting and it made me feel bad. It made me feel uncomfortable.”

Then Ortega had a revelation. “One day I woke up and I was like, ‘Oh, I don’t need this anymore.’ So I let it go.” Stepping away from Twitter, she said, was part of her “learning” to protect herself.

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The actress made her acting debut in 2012 and landed small roles in sitcoms and a brief appearance in Iron Man 3She reached a new level of fame playing the young version of Gina Rodriguez's main character in the series Jane the Virgin and the lead role in the Disney Channel Original Stuck in the middleIn recent years, she has cemented her status as a modern scream queen with roles in films like 2022's. Scream, Studio 666And X. His role in Wednesday, However, it propelled her into the major leagues.

While acknowledging his gratitude for the sudden fame, Ortega admitted that it has made managing his mental health and insecurities “much, much harder.”

“I try really hard not to criticize myself too much or kill myself over things that, in the grand scheme of the world, with the news and the things that you see, are just not important at all,” Ortega said. “I should be having so much fun right now. So much fun! And I’m not. And I should be. And I try to remind myself of that.”

Listen to Ortega's thoughts on his celebrity childhood in the podcast episode above.

Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly.