Taylor Swift is very protective of her image in the public eye. Turns out, she’s quite protective of it in the eyes of AI, too. Now, the pop star is following a blueprint established by Matthew McConaughey to potentially create a legal shield that would protect her likeness from being used in generative AI outputs in a way she doesn’t approve of.
Variety first reported that Swift’s strategy includes three trademark applications with the US Patent and Trademark Office, which were filed on her behalf by her company TAS Rights Management, which handles intellectual property and copyright matters for the pop star.
Two of the trademarks are audio of her voice, the first saying, “Hey, it’s Taylor Swift,” and the other saying, “Hey, it’s Taylor.” You know, classic Taylor Swift things to say. The third trademark is a visual one, covering a photo of Swift on stage. It’s described in the application as “a photograph of Taylor Swift holding a pink guitar, with a black strap and wearing a multi-colored iridescent bodysuit with silver boots. She is standing on a pink stage in front of a multi-colored microphone with purple lights in the background.”
Why file trademarks for these, frankly, pretty run-of-the-mill markers of one of the most famous people on earth? It’s a follow-on to a strategy developed by Matthew McConaughey’s legal team, who filed similar protections over both audio (McConaughey saying, “Alright, alright, alright,” which feels a bit more iconic than “Hey, it’s Taylor”) and images of the actor.
The idea is to take away the touchstones of a celebrity that a person may seek to imitate using generative AI and create a handle for any legal challenge that these famous folks may want to bring against an unauthorized reproduction of their likeness.
That is a growing concern for celebrities, and Swift has already been central to several AI scandals. Back in 2024, she was the victim of a widespread deepfake porn campaign that spread across Elon Musk’s X, in which users created nonconsensual, sexually explicit images of her that were viewed millions of times. She also had to speak out after then-candidate Donald Trump posted an AI-generated video depicting Swift endorsing him for president, which she did not do.
The approach being laid out by McConaughey and copied by Swift is still legally untested and may prove difficult to actually implement. It’d likely come down to proving that the trademarked material is in the training data set that ultimately produced a generative AI replica of the person in question. But whether the strategy would actually work in court is likely less important than the simple threat of it. The idea is likely to just put another club in the bag that might scare off AI firms from even trying it in the first place.
That’s great for celebrities who can afford both to file trademarks and defend them in court. The rest of us, unfortunately, have to live with our name, image, and likeness being fodder for the machine until literally any lawmaker does their job to protect us.
Read the full article here
