Taylor Swift Files Three Trademarks to Combat AI Voice Cloning

Taylor Swift has filed three new trademark applications with the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office, a move intellectual property attorney Josh Gerben theorizes is specifically designed to protect her voice and image from artificial intelligence misuse.

The filings, made on behalf of Swift's TAS Rights Management, include two sound trademarks and one visual trademark. According to the Associated Press report, the sound marks cover her saying "Hey, it's Taylor Swift" and "Hey, it's Taylor."

The third application protects a specific visual: a photograph of Swift holding a pink guitar with a black strap, wearing a multicolored iridescent bodysuit with silver boots, standing on a pink stage in front of a multicolored microphone with purple lights in the background. All three applications have been approved and are awaiting assignment to an examining attorney.

Gerben first spotted the filings and published his analysis on his blog. In his post, he explained that while "Right of Publicity" laws offer some protection against unauthorized use of a celebrity's likeness, trademark filings can provide an additional layer of defense. (This is the kind of legal maneuvering that happens when existing frameworks start feeling like a sieve.)

The strategy makes sense given Swift's history with AI misuse. Pornographic deepfake images of her have circulated online, making her one of the most famous victims of a problem that tech platforms and antiabuse groups have struggled to fix. In another instance, the superstar appeared in a fake endorsement of President Donald Trump during his 2024 campaign, which the then-candidate reposted and shared as genuine.

Sound marks are not new—Netflix's "tu-dum" and NBC's chimes are famous examples. But attempting to register a celebrity's spoken voice is a relatively untested use of trademark registration. The filings arrive as AI-generated content continues to create problems in the entertainment industry, with musicians and actors increasingly finding their voices and images used in unauthorized videos, songs, and digital content.

Swift is not alone in pursuing this strategy. Actor Matthew McConaughey secured eight trademarks from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in January, including a sound trademark of his catchphrase "Alright, alright, alright." Attorneys for the entertainment law firm Yorn Levine, which represented McConaughey, told Variety the trademarks were filed to protect his voice and likeness from unauthorized AI use.

Last year, McConaughey made a deal with voice-cloning company ElevenLabs that will allow its artificial intelligence technology to replicate his voice. This dual approach—protecting against unauthorized use while licensing authorized use—suggests a broader industry shift in how celebrities are applying trademark law to fight back against AI.

Historically, artists haven't used trademark law this way. Under U.S. law, songs are protected by copyright, and someone's likeness or image is protected by Right of Publicity laws. But AI has broken that model. Now, anyone can spin up a version of an artist's voice, have it say anything, attach it to anything, and distribute it at scale. And the scary part? It doesn't have to be an exact copy to cause damage.

That's where trademarks come in. Trademark law doesn't just stop identical uses like copyright law does—it stops anything that is "confusingly similar" to the registered trademark. That's a much broader right and more powerful tool in an AI world. By registering specific phrases tied to her voice, Swift could potentially challenge not only identical reproductions but also imitations that meet the confusingly similar standard.

The image-based filing serves a similar purpose. By protecting a distinctive visual down to Swift's commonly worn jumpsuit and pose, her team may gain additional grounds to pursue claims against manipulated or AI-generated images that evoke her likeness. Trademark claims add a critical element of protection by enhancing the ability to obtain emergency injunctive relief and to recover more damages against the AI platforms themselves.

Rebecca Liebowitz, partner at law firm Venable, is listed as the attorney on the filings. The Associated Press reached out to a representative for Swift as well as Liebowitz, but requests for comment were not immediately returned.

Ultimately, Swift and McConaughey's recent trademark filings are testing new theories on how trademark law will work in the AI age. But it remains to be seen if the filings will work as intended. A Federal Court will need a case to stress-test the legal theories behind the filings.

Whether these trademarks actually stop AI misuse or just create more paperwork for lawyers remains the real question. The legal theories are strong on paper, but until someone actually sues an AI platform over this, nobody knows if it'll hold up in court.

Artūras Malašauskas is an AI Systems Integrator with 20+ years of production-grade web engineering experience. He has designed, shipped, and scaled enterprise Python/PHP systems for logistics, SaaS, and public-sector clients. For the past year, he has focused exclusively on AI integrations: deploying open-source LLMs, building generative media pipelines (image, audio, video), and engineering multi-agent workflows for real production environments. His standard: reproducibility, security, cost-efficient inference—no vaporware. He documents and evaluates emerging AI tooling, separating verified capabilities from marketing noise. Technical editor at: muza-ai.eu, ai-verslas.lt, ai-naujinos.lt Connect on LinkedIn