At the Marrakech Film Festival over the weekend, Jenna Ortega used her spot on the festival’s main jury to voice clear and personal concerns about the growing use of AI in filmmaking.
Speaking during the jury press conference, the “Wednesday” star said the industry is entering a period of uncertainty… not the kind that builds character, either. More the kind that keeps you up at night.
“When you look back at history, we just always take things too far, and I think it’s very easy to be terrified — I know I am — of deep uncertainty,” she said, according to Variety. Ortega added that with AI, “it kind of feels like we’ve opened Pandora’s box in a way.”
Ortega shared that she hopes audiences will eventually reject AI-made work for its lack of human depth. She stressed that mistakes and imperfections are central to art, and those are precisely the things machines cannot produce.
“But there’s certain things that AI just isn’t able to replicate. There’s beauty in difficulty and there’s beauty in mistakes, and a computer can’t do that. A computer has no soul,” she said.
She went further, suggesting AI content might eventually feel empty: “I would hope it gets to a point where it becomes sort of mental junk food… and we feel sick and we don’t know why,” she said, as quoted by Variety.
Bong Joon Ho jokes about ‘destroying AI’
The sentiment was widely shared across the jury, with members offering equally passionate and, at times, humorous reactions.
Parasite director Bong Joon Ho, who serves as the jury president, offered a characteristically radical two-part response when asked about AI. He started by acknowledging its philosophical value, then pivoted to a personal, military-minded joke.
“My official answer is, AI is good because it’s the very beginning of the human race finally seriously thinking about what only humans can do,” he said, adding: “But my personal answer is, I’m going to organize a military squad, and their mission is to destroy AI,” per Deadline.
Filmmaker Celine Song, director of Past Lives, was also direct, quoting another cinema legend to make her point on the technology’s impact.
“To quote Guillermo del Toro, who will be here at this festival, ‘Fuck AI,’” Song said, arguing that AI is “completely colonizing our minds in the way that we encounter images and sound.” She emphasized that the true role of artists is to defend “humanity” and everything that makes life “very, very beautiful and very, very hard.”
Why Ortega’s comments hit a nerve
Ortega’s statements land at a time when Hollywood is already in open tension with AI developers. Deepfakes, cloning voices, and non-consensual digital replicas have driven actors and writers to push for new protections.
The divide is widening even further as AI-created performers like Tilly Norwood gain traction online, attracting followers and even interest from talent agencies.
While her creator frames the project as artistic experimentation, many actors see it as a threat to their livelihoods, warning that synthetic talent is built on uncredited human work and chips away at the authenticity audiences expect. SAG-AFTRA has also raised alarms, insisting that creativity must remain human-centered.
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