May 12, 2026
Right now, somewhere in Burbank, a
producer just signed a forty-page AI vendor contract she didn't
read. Eight months from today, that signature becomes a federal
lawsuit, a SAG-AFTRA grievance, and a streamer threatening to drop
her show.
You already feel it. Every meeting now opens with the same
question. Are we using AI on this? Nobody in the room agrees on
what the answer means. Your line producer says one thing. Your
studio counsel says another. Your distributor sends a delivery
checklist asking for things your post house has never been asked to
certify. Your E&O carrier just slipped a new exclusion into
your policy. And the clock is running.
Here is the truth nobody is telling
you.
The decisions you make this week on AI in your productions will
determine whether your project gets distributed, whether your stars
sue you, whether your union files a grievance, and whether the
copyright in your finished work survives at the U.S. Copyright
Office. This is not coming. This is here.
And you are out of time to learn it the slow way.
That is exactly why this book
exists.
Veteran trial lawyer Mitch Jackson hands you the working operating
manual for AI in film, television, and streaming production right
now, in 2026. Twenty chapters. Twenty distinct issues. Plain
English. No law review. Built for working pros — producers,
directors, showrunners, studio executives, actors, writers,
editors, agents, managers, and the lawyers who back them up.
Inside, you will get straight answers
on:
- Copyright in the AI era — what registers, what gets carved out, and the human-authorship test that determines who actually owns your final cut
- Disney v. Midjourney, UMG v. Anthropic, and the Bartz precedent — how training-data lawsuits flow downstream into your project
- Digital replicas and voice cloning — consent, compensation, and control under the SAG-AFTRA agreements and the ELVIS Act
- Posthumous rights, deepfakes, and synthetic performers like Tilly Norwood — the new clearance reality
- The 50-state patchwork, the NO FAKES Act, the EU AI Act, AB 853, and the December 2025 federal AI executive order
- The 2026 WGA, SAG-AFTRA, IATSE, and Animation Guild contracts — what is on the bargaining table and what it means for your set
- De-aging, ADR cloning, and lip-sync alteration — when consent triggers and when it does not
- AI riders for talent, vendors, and crew — the contract language that holds up in arbitration
- Chain of title, copyright registration, and E&O insurance in the AI era — and the warranties you need before you wrap
- AI in marketing — trailers, key art, chatbots, and the FTC penalties you did not know existed
Read it once, cover to cover. Then keep
it on the shelf next to your call sheets.
Because the people who survive this decade in entertainment will
not be the smartest ones in the room. They will be the ones who saw
what was coming and prepared. The ones who built a vocabulary for
it. The ones who hired the right counsel, structured the right
deals, and signed the right riders before their projects
shipped.
Whatever role you play. Whatever chair you sit in.
That is what you are doing right now,
with this book in your hands.
More at https://mitch-jackson.com/hollywood