Jenna Ortega Says Explicit AI Images of Herself as a Child Led to Her Social Media Exit: "It's Terrifying"

Jenna Ortega is currently gearing up for the release of her movie Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. She has also been recalling some of her challenging experiences. During a recent interview with The New York Times, Ortega spoke about how her teenage encounter with online content shaped her hatred for AI. She shared that when she was just 12 years old, she received a disturbing DM on X (formerly Twitter) that had an unsolicited explicit photo. This also led her to deactivate her X account.

When asked about AI, she was very straightforward with her opinion. She said, “I hate A.I. I mean, here’s the thing: A.I. 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. 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." The interviewer then asked, "You saw A.I.-generated images of you as a child? Like pornographic ones?"

To this, Ortega replied, "Yes, of course. One of the first — actually the first D.M. 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. 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 of 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." She added, "It was disgusting, and it made me feel bad."

"It made me feel 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 continued. Ortega confessed she’s still figuring out how to safeguard herself, particularly in a career where she’s constantly in the spotlight, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The actress also said, “I’m really working on not being so self-critical or just killing myself over things that in the grand scheme of the world with the news and things you see, it’s really just not important at all."

"I should be having so much fun right now. So much fun! And I don’t. And I should. And I try to remind myself of that,” she added. Meanwhile, Ortega recently set the record straight about the rumor that she was dating Johnny Depp. The Beetlejuice Beetlejuice star addressed the craziest rumor she's ever heard and said, “Probably that I was in a serious relationship with Johnny Depp and I wanted everybody to leave us alone. It’s so insane to me. I never said anything like that.” As reported by Us Weekly, she added, “I thought that that was pretty hilarious. I was on set with Richard E. Grant and he came up to me and he said, ‘Oh, so you and Johnny …’ and I laughed because I don’t know that person.”