Jonathan Handel

Jonathan Handel is an American entertainment and technology attorney, journalist, and author. Harvard College (applied mathematics) and Harvard Law School trained, he clerked on the Fifth Circuit, served as a federal associate independent counsel, and worked on the Writers Guild of America West legal staff before covering Hollywood labour for The Hollywood Reporter from 2010 to 2020. He has written five books on entertainment labour, including the standard reference on residuals, teaches at Southwestern Law School and USC Gould, and has been engaged by SAG-AFTRA as outside special counsel. When a strike or an AI clause is in the news, he is one of the handful of people the wire services call.

Reading the AI clauses line by line

Handel’s AI commentary is technical rather than polemical. Explaining the 2026 SAG-AFTRA contract, he noted that studios may build AI-generated avatars that do not resemble a particular person if they bargain with the union, and may create a digital replica of a performer’s voice or likeness with that performer’s consent. Writing on his newsletter in May 2026, he catalogued what the new pact added — replicas made from ordinary photography are now covered, independently created replicas trigger at least scale compensation and residuals, foreign-language dubbing by replica requires consent — under a headline that captured his two-sidedness.

The canary in the coal mine

Asked by Business Insider in July 2026 about micro drama apps reissuing shows with synthetic leads, Handel put the practice in a longer frame. Union-covered Hollywood still has contractual limits and the deterrent of audience backlash; the vertical business, which is largely nonunion, has neither — and he expects the informal restraint to weaken as synthetic casts become ordinary somewhere in the market.

It is a lawyer’s prediction rather than a protest: the constraint that matters is what is written down, because everything else is subject to competitive pressure. He was quoted in the same report as actors Ashley BeLoat and Evan Gambardella, whose contracts with apps like MoboReels and GoodShort contained nothing of the sort.

He had made the same diagnosis two months earlier, when performers including Tess Dinerstein and Faith Orta found AI-altered promos placing them in sex scenes they never filmed. A standard actor contract, Handel explained, gives the producer broad rights over image and voice, which is why performers so rarely win these fights; they can bargain for clauses barring sexualised promotional use, but asking may simply cost them the job.