Jenna Ortega is raising red flags about the rapid rise of artificial intelligence in filmmaking, saying the technology poses a “deep uncertainty” that people in the film world shouldn’t ignore.
Speaking at the Marrakech Film Festival, where she’s serving on the jury alongside director Bong Joon Ho, the Wednesday star made it clear she’s both wary of AI and hopeful its dangers and misuse might spark a new artistic awakening.
Ortega said the long history of human innovation shows “we just always take things too far,” adding that AI feels like “opening Pandora’s box.” She admitted she’s scared of what comes next, calling the current moment “very easy to be terrified” by.
Still, Ortega believes the unease could push artists to reclaim what machines can’t 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.
Ortega also delivered one of the festival’s most striking comments, saying that audiences may well recoil from AI-generated work.
“I hope it comes to a point where it becomes mental junk food and we see it on the screen and feel sick and don’t know why," she said. "Sometimes audiences need to be deprived of something in order to appreciate it again.”
Bong echoed Ortega’s concerns, saying AI forces society to seriously consider “what only humans can do,” though he joked that he’d personally lead a “military squad” to wipe out the technology entirely.
The jury’s skepticism didn’t stop there. Filmmaker Celine Song bluntly declared, “Fuck AI,” arguing it is “colonizing our mind,” reshaping how people experience images and sound, and threatening the humanity that artists fight to protect.
The Marrakech Film Festival, which runs through December 6, features an international jury including Anya Taylor-Joy, Julia Ducournau, Celine Song, Karim Aïnouz, Hakim Belabbes, and Payman Maadi.
