Mara Wilson has expressed her concerns about the way the cast is doing Stranger things gets caught up in the ‘deepfake apocalypse’.
In an op-ed for The Guardian In the newspaper, the 38-year-old American actress wrote that artificial intelligence will exploit everyone, including child stars and young actors, if it is not regulated without proper supervision.
Wilson went on to talk about her own experience of being “used for child sexual abuse material,” which left her concerned about the safety and integrity of other actors, such as the stars of Stranger things and Disney films.
She wrote: “Before I was even in high school, my image was used for Child Sexual Abuse (CSAM) material. I was featured on fetish websites and photoshopped into p****graphy.”
The Matilda star said: “Grown men sent me creepy letters. I wasn’t a pretty girl — my awkward age lasted from about 10 to about 25 — and I was almost exclusively in family-friendly films. But I was a public figure, so I was accessible. That’s what child sexual predators are looking for: access. And nothing has made me more accessible than the Internet.”
Wilson admitted it was a crushing experience and she doesn’t want any child to go through it.
She added: “It was a painful, abusive experience; a living nightmare that I hoped no other child would experience. Growing up, I worried about the other children who had followed me. Did similar things happen to the Disney stars, the cast of Strangers Things, the young teens making TikTok dances and laughing on family vloggers’ YouTube channels?”
Remarkably, The House of Magic Alum’s fears have become reality when X (formerly Twitter) users asked AI tool Grok to undress a 14-year-old actress Nell Fisher, who played Holly Wheeler in Stranger Things.
However, Elon Musk’s company later released a statement assuring that it would stop Grok from “allowing the editing of images of real people in revealing clothing such as bikinis.”
“Generative AI has reinvented stranger danger. And this time the fear is justified. It is now infinitely easier for every child whose face is posted on the Internet to be sexually exploited. Millions of children could be forced to live the same nightmare,” Mara Wilson wrote.
