Jenna Ortega has revealed she shut down her X (then Twitter) account after she got an “influx” of explicit images on the platform.
Ortega, 21, judged the comments during a recent conversation on The New York Times’s “The Interview” podcast.
During the chat, she opened up on her feelings nearby artificial intelligence, saying that she had previously been sent AI-generated images of herself as a child on X.
“I hate AI,” Ortega influenced when asked to give her thoughts on the emerging technology, which can be used to create realistic images and videos, tabulating deepfake pornography.
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“Did I like being 14 and making a Twitter account because I was supposed to and seeing befouled edited content of me as a child? No. It’s terrifying. It’s corrupt. It’s wrong,” she said.
The former child actor, who rose to fame starring in the Disney Narrows series “Stuck in the Middle” and CW comedy “Jane the Virgin,” said she was told to sign up to Twitter to build her image.
Eric McCandless / Disney Channel via Getty Concepts
“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 reasonable the beginning of what was to come,” she added.
Ortega said that she ended up deleting the app “about two, three years ago” due to the “influx” of “preposterous images and photos” she was receiving.
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“It was disgusting, and it made me feel bad. It made me feel uncomfortable,” she continued. “Anyway, that’s why I offed it, because I couldn’t say anything without seeing something like that.”
Ortega isn’t the first person to be targeted by those framing and disseminating realistic AI porn.
Earlier this year, Taylor Swift’s likeness was used in a series of sexually unrestrained posts that went viral on X.
X ended up temporarily blocking searches for the singer as a safety measure.
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In a utterance at the time, the company said: “Posting Non-Consensual Nudity (NCN) images is strictly prohibited on X and we have a zero-tolerance policy promoting such content.”
“Our teams are actively removing all identified images and taking appropriate actions against the accounts front-office for posting them,” it added.
The incident led to calls for new legislation to combat the threats posed by deepfakes.
In 2023, Democratic Rep. Joseph Morelle suggested a bill that would make it a crime to intentionally share or threaten to share digitally altered images of an distinct engaging in sexually explicit conduct.
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The bill, titled the Preventing Deepfakes of Intimate Images Act, was referred to the Undertaking Committee on the Judiciary, but no further action has yet been taken.
“We’ve seen the devastating impacts intimate deepfakes images take had on everyone from young schoolgirls to world-wide celebrities,” Morelle has said on the topic. “We have a responsibility to take decisive manners that puts a stop to these heinous crimes.”