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Jenna Ortega has revealed she deleted her Twitter account after years of receiving unsolicited images of naked men and explicit, AI-generated images of herself.
The Wednesday star discussed her experiences with social media in a new interview, and recalled being told as a child that she had to get online to “build her image” – only to be bombarded with “disgusting” images.
Speaking to The New York Times, the 21-year-old said that she worried about the current boom in AI due to her earlier experiences with technology designed to create fake pictures.
“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?” the actor asked. “No. It’s terrifying. It’s corrupt. It’s wrong.”
She continued: “One of the first — actually the first [direct message] 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 said that she deleted her Twitter account in the wake of Wednesday’s launch in 2022, a period that propelled her to global fame. Becoming so famous also meant an increase in the volume of pornographic images she received.
“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 said. “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.”
The former child actor has become one of the most in-demand stars in Hollywood, and will next month appear in the belated sequel Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. Her other credits include X, the controversial Miller’s Girl and the reboot of Scream.
Earlier this month Ortega expressed regret for comments she had made about changing lines in the Wednesday scripts, saying she “probably could have used my words better in describing all of that”.
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The actor also made a cameo this week in a music video by pop star Sabrina Carpenter, which sees the pair recreate scenes from films including Death Becomes Her and Ginger Snaps.
