Brad Pitt says AI will allow mid-budget films to get made

By Casey Cooper-Fiske, Press Association Senior Entertainment Reporter

American actor Brad Pitt has said artificial intelligence (AI) will allow mid-budget films to be made.

The 62-year-old Fight Club star described the technology as a “very interesting experiment” and said he had heard an AI song which he thought was “pretty damn good”, but not the same as a human voice.

He told Esquire magazine: “There’s a lot of pushback against AI, but AI is going to be the very thing that, if used as a tool, is going to help these mid-budget films, forty to ninety million dollar budgeted films, get made.”

Pitt was later told that AI had made a video of him fighting Mission Impossible star Tom Cruise which had been shared on social media, and was asked whether the technology could eventually replace actors.

He replied: “It depends on who’s creating it, you know? Who’s behind it, who’s telling the story, who’s saying: ‘I want to see this emotion from him’, and then being able to mine through whatever AI provides and going ‘more in this direction’, and tailoring it in that way.

“So they could, but the final product might not be my choices and what I found and discovered in the thing.

“Look, it’s going to be a very interesting experiment.”

He also spoke about being scanned in films “for the last 20 years” and said he always puts it in his contract for films that he owns them.

Pitt added: “I destroy them, I should have kept them. All this time I’ve always had them destroyed, because I’m a paranoid Ozark boy.”

Elsewhere in the interview, Pitt revealed bad acting “drives me crazy” and added: “It’s why I can’t watch porn.”

Along with 1999’s Fight Club, Pitt is known for films such as Thelma And Louise (1991), Seven (1995), Snatch (2000), The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button (2008), Inglourious Basterds (2009), and Once Upon A Time In Hollywood (2019).

He has won two Oscars and two Bafta Awards.

The full interview can be read on Esquire UK.