In a discussion with the media, the Oscar-winning actor said AI, when treated as a creative tool, could make costly visual effects more accessible and help filmmakers produce movies with budgets ranging from USD 40 million to USD 90 million.

“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, USD 40 to 90 million-budgeted films, get made,” Pitt said.

However, the actor expressed more nuanced views about using AI to reproduce an actor's performance. Asked whether the technology could replicate one of his performances, Pitt said much would depend on who was directing the process and the creative decisions behind it.

According to Pitt, AI could potentially recreate elements of a performance, but the resulting portrayal might not reflect the choices, emotions and discoveries that he originally brought to the role.

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

Pitt described AI's growing role in filmmaking as “gonna be a very interesting experiment”, while also discussing the increasingly common practice of scanning actors' bodies for visual-effects work.

Body scans can be used for stunt sequences, battle scenes and de-ageing, but the practice has also raised questions around ownership, licensing and the future use of performers' digital likenesses.

Pitt revealed that he has been scanned for visual-effects purposes for nearly two decades. He said he has consistently included clauses in his contracts requiring ownership of the scans and their destruction after use.

“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.”

The actor also shared his reaction to an AI-generated song he recently heard. While impressed by its quality, he felt it lacked something compared with the authenticity of a performance by a real singer.

“I heard an AI song the other day that was pretty damn good,” Pitt said, while noting 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,” he added.

Pitt's upcoming projects also include Heart of the Beast, in which he plays a special forces soldier who survives a plane crash alongside his dog.

He will later reprise his Oscar-winning role as stuntman Cliff Booth in The Adventures of Cliff Booth, a follow-up to Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. The film is directed by David Fincher.