Jenna Ortega Critiques AI at Marrakech Film Festival

During a recent film festival, actress Jenna Ortega expressed her concerns about artificial intelligence (AI) and its implications for Hollywood, suggesting that the industry has opened a “Pandora’s Box.”

Reflecting on the past, Ortega remarked, “If you look back at history, we humans always tend to take things too far. We get scared very easily. I know we are in a time of such profound uncertainty.” She shared her thoughts in a panel discussion about the recent rise of AI in the film industry at the Marrakech Film Festival.

She added, “In a way, I feel like we’ve opened Pandora’s box.” Ortega expressed that AI lacks the ability to recreate certain human experiences, saying, “There are some things that AI can’t reproduce. Of course, there are mistakes that are beautiful and difficult, but computers can’t do that. Computers don’t have souls. They don’t have anything that we can resonate with or empathize with.”

Ortega also envisioned a future where audiences grow weary of AI-generated content, leading them to crave authentic storytelling once again. “I don’t want to make assumptions about the audience, but I hope it gets to a point where it’s like some kind of mental junk food,” she said. “Suddenly everyone feels sick and they don’t know why, and then one independent filmmaker in their backyard comes out with something and this new excitement is released again.”

She concluded, “Sometimes I think it’s terrible. Sometimes you have to take something away from the audience in order to achieve something again.”

Notably, South Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-ho, who joined Ortega on the panel, claimed he plans to “organize a military unit” with the goal of “destroying AI.” He stated, “My official answer is that AI is a good thing because it’s about time humanity finally started thinking seriously about things that only humans can do. But my personal answer is that we’re going to build an army and their mission is to destroy the AI.”

Additionally, Moroccan director Hakim Belabez compared the rising role of AI in creativity to a “new form of colonialism,” emphasizing, “The models they use in AI are not mine. They don’t belong to me. I have to create my own world. Otherwise, it’s just a new form of colonialism. It’s a whitewashing of our heritage.”