Matthew McConaughey trademarks "Alright, alright, alright" to protect it from the machines

McConaughey reportedly trademarked his Dazed And Confused line as legal protection against AI infringement.

By William Hughes | January 14, 2026 | 8:57pm

Matthew McConaughey (Screenshot: Dazed And Confused/YouTube)

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There has been much ink spilled, in recent years, about the cultural thefts that occur both in and around the generative artificial “intelligence” business, a multi-billion dollar industry that seems to exist primarily to render the sum total of all human creative effort down into slurry for the machines to sup upon, process, and then slop back out into our collective, open, and waiting mouths. But can the computers truly replicate those things that make us most human? What of the laughter of a child? The feel of winter’s first snowflakes? The sound of Matthew McConaughey contemplating picking up high school girls on a Texas evening and solemnly intoning “Alright, alright, alright”?

That latter question, per Variety, is the subject of a new trademark that McConaughey has now secured for himself, apparently as part of an effort to control whether genAI can incorporate his famous Dazed And Confused verbal tic into itself. We should be specific, though, because McConaughey didn’t manage to get the patent on being alright in general: The actor has instead acquired a soundmark from the U.S. Patent And Trademark Office on “a man saying ‘ALRIGHT ALRIGHT ALRIGHT’, wherein the first syllable of the first two words is at a lower pitch than the second syllable, and the first syllable of the last word is at a higher pitch than the second syllable.”

Besides forcing us to imagine, for a brief but powerful moment, the point in some poor legal peon’s day where their boss asked them to write out what Matthew McConaughey sounds like in a legally binding sense, the soundmark is apparently intended to give the actor’s lawyers a possible federal standing for future legal action against AI infringement. (It’s worth noting, by the way, that McConaughey isn’t anti-AI; he has a deal with at least one firm to produce a Spanish-language version of his newsletter with “his” voice. But he’s clearly worried about his iconic cadence and laid-back vibe getting used by the robots without him getting paid.)

Originally filed for back in 2023, and granted last December, the “Alright” soundmark is actually one of eight trademarks that McConaughey and his legal team have now acquired: Others, per Variety, include “a 7-second video clip of him standing on a porch; a 3-second clip of him sitting in front of a Christmas tree; and audio of him saying ‘Just keep livin’, right?’ followed by a pause, then ‘I mean,’ followed by another pause, and ending with ‘What are we gonna do?’” Which, okay, yeah: It does feel like they’ve boiled the whole Matthew McConaughey experience down pretty succinctly, doesn’t it?

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