At the Marrakech Film Festival, Jenna Ortega wasn’t promoting a cute rom-com or doing a quirky Wednesday Addams bit. She was sitting on a jury panel, talking about the future of film — and she dropped a line that instantly ricocheted around the internet: “A computer has no soul.” She was talking about AI. Within hours, her remarks weren’t just a festival soundbite anymore; they’d become a touchpoint in the growing culture war over what “art” even means in the age of algorithms.
“It’s Very Easy to Be Terrified” of AI
Jenna didn’t mince words about how unsettling she finds AI’s role in Hollywood. She described this moment as a kind of “Pandora’s box” — once opened, you can’t really close it again. It’s not just the tech itself that scares her, but how humans always seem to push things too far. There’s a particular kind of dread she tapped into: that feeling that we’re sliding into something we don’t fully understand, and by the time we do, it may be too late to pull back.
The Charm of the Human Condition
Underneath the headlines, Jenna’s argument is actually pretty romantic. She talked about the “charm in the human condition” — the messy, imperfect, emotional side of making stuff. In her view, those crooked edges are exactly what AI can’t replicate. A computer can remix patterns and mimic style, but it can’t wake up heartbroken, fall in love with a script, or have a breakdown in its trailer and then channel that into a performance. To her, those “beautiful, difficult mistakes” are the soul of cinema.
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Why Fans Are Saying “She Gets It”
Once her comments hit social media and were clipped into short videos and posts, a lot of fans and fellow creatives reacted with a huge sense of relief. Here’s a major Gen-Z star — someone squarely in the demographic AI companies are chasing — openly saying she hopes audiences eventually get sick of AI-generated content and run back to real human stories. For people worried about synthetic actors, AI-written scripts, and studios using tech to cut costs (instead of fairly paying people), Jenna sounded less like a cautious PR-trained celebrity and more like a co-worker venting in the break room.
And Why Some People Think She’s Overreacting
Of course, not everyone agreed. As her quotes spread, some commenters rolled their eyes and accused her of being “anti-tech” or not understanding how AI tools actually work. The pushback followed a familiar pattern: people arguing that AI is just another tool, like editing software or green screens, and that human artists will always be needed anyway. A few more cynical voices said of course actors are worried — no one likes competition, even if it’s digital.
What all that debate really shows, though, is how emotionally loaded AI has become. It’s not just code; it’s careers, identity, and fears about becoming replaceable.
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This Isn’t Theoretical for Her
Part of why Jenna’s comments land differently is that AI hasn’t just been an abstract idea in her life. She’s previously spoken about how social media fame made her hyper-aware of how her image can be twisted or misused — and she’s reportedly been targeted with AI-generated explicit images in the past. That kind of violation turns “a computer has no soul” from a poetic one-liner into a lived boundary: if tech can fake your body and your face, what’s to stop it from faking your “performance” too? (
The Ghost of an AI “Actor” Hanging Over Hollywood
Jenna’s remarks also arrived in a Hollywood that’s still raw from fights over AI in recent labor strikes and headlines about eerily realistic “AI actors.” One synthetic performer, marketed as the “next Scarlett Johansson,” kicked off huge backlash from unions and human performers who saw it as a warning sign for where studios might be headed. When Jenna says she’s terrified, she’s not imagining some distant sci-fi future — she’s talking about a present where digital stand-ins are already circling the industry like vultures.
Hoping the Audience Rebels
What’s interesting is that Jenna doesn’t just put the responsibility on studios or tech bros; she puts it on us. She’s banking on audiences eventually noticing that something is missing in AI-made stories — that subtle spark you feel when you watch a real person crack, laugh, or fall apart on screen — and choosing human-made work instead. It’s almost like she’s calling for a soft rebellion: change what you click on, what you watch, what you pay for, and the industry will have to listen.
Why Her Words Matter More Than Just One Panel
Jenna Ortega isn’t the first actor to criticize AI, and she won’t be the last. But the timing and tone of her comments make them stand out. She’s young, massively popular with younger viewers, and right in the middle of her breakout career phase. When she says AI scares her, it hits differently than when a veteran speaks from the comfort of a long-established legacy.
Her reaction is a snapshot of how a new generation of artists are feeling: excited about the possibilities of tech, but deeply wary of becoming raw material for a machine that doesn’t know — or care — what it feels like to be human.
The Line in the Sand
In the end, Jenna’s message is pretty simple: you can’t outsource soul. AI might be able to help polish a shot, spitball dialogue options, or even fake a face. But it can’t sit at 3 a.m. staring at a script that scares you and decide to do it anyway. It can’t feel.
Whether or not the industry listens, her comments have drawn a clear line in the sand for herself and for a lot of her fans: technology can be impressive, even useful — but if it starts to erase the messy, imperfect, irreplaceable human heart of storytelling, that’s where the real horror story begins.
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