Brad Pitt is keeping an open mind about AI use in movies, saying that it could actually help more mid-budget projects get made.
The Oscar-winning actor was asked his thoughts on the topic in a new Esquire cover story, particularly when it comes to creating visual effects that could otherwise be very expensive.
“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, $40 to $90 million-budgeted films, get made,” Pitt said.
However, he has more complicated feelings toward AI being used to replace actors. Questioned if he believes AI could replicate one of his performances, Pitt told Esquire: “Well, 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.”
Pitt added that AI use in movies is “gonna be a very interesting experiment” and also discussed the controversial practice of body scanning, which is often done to aid in stunt work, battle scenes or de-aging but has raised concerns over licensing and how the scans may be used in the future.
“They’re telling us all to … scan ourselves,” Pitt said. “I’ve been scanned for the last 20 years, and I’ve always put in my contract: I own them and I destroy them. I should have kept them! All this time I’ve always had them destroyed, because I’m paranoid Ozark boy.”
Pitt also admitted that he “heard an AI song the other day that was pretty damn good,” but added that “it had a repetitive nature to it. It’s not going to be the same as hearing her voice — a woman’s voice, a person’s voice.”
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Pitt’s next movie is “Heart of the Beast,” about a special forces soldier who survives a plane crash with his dog, and then he’ll reprise his Oscar-winning role as Cliff Booth in a follow-up to Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” that’s being directed by David Fincher. Titled “The Adventures of Cliff Booth,” Esquire described the movie as not exactly a sequel, but more like “the kind of episodic television Tarantino has said he grew up watching, with characters you could follow from adventure to adventure, but each episode also stood on its own.”
Pitt said that after Tarantino — who wrote the script for “The Adventures of Cliff Booth” — decided he didn’t want the movie to be his 10th and last, Pitt asked if he could show it to his “Fight Club” director Fincher.
“Quentin gave me his blessing,” Pitt said. “Finch and I were on a plane and I gave him the script, and by the time we landed he said, ‘I’m doing it.’”
Elsewhere in the story, Pitt revealed that he is no longer sober. “I was sober for seven years. And then I got back off the wagon,” he said. “In a more restrained manner. I got overconfident a couple times, went, Yep, nope, not good for me. Not in big quantities.”
He said he can have a “few” glasses of wine, “but I can’t have a lot. I have to be professional about it.”
Pitt also opened up about one of the darkest periods in his life, which he said had to do with “family stuff,” likely referencing his contentious divorce with ex Angelina Jolie and the fact that several of their children have dropped his last name.
“I’ve never been suicidal except for one little period,” he said. ” And in that one little period, I just thought— I just couldn’t — just didn’t see a way out. The pain was so oppressive that — I wasn’t going to act on this, but I could feel — I could feel the cold steel of the bullet in my head, and it felt like relief. And I thought, Oh, okay, now I understand — I understand suicide, in the sense that it’s just relief. It’s just looking for relief from the pain. But I also think we have incredible survival instincts. And for me, that immediately kicked in.”
Read Pitt’s full Esquire profile here.
From Variety US