Taylor Swift files trademarks for voice and likeness before AI can 

The latest celebrity to trademark themselves, Taylor Swift, joins Matthew McConaughey in the fight against deepfakes. 

By Matt Schimkowitz  |  April 27, 2026 | 10:55pm
Photo courtesy of Disney
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Taylor Swift files trademarks for voice and likeness before AI can 

Taylor Swift is no stranger to being deepfaked. Even the President of the United States has posted a little Swift-slop in his day, using the pop titan’s image to endorse himself for president. But while that happened—Jesus—nearly two years ago, and he won, so, whatever, maybe it worked, as of this Friday, Ms. Swift is taking a bit more control of her image and voice. Per NBC News, the “Bad Blood” singer filed a trademark application for her likeness and voice last week. She submitted an image on stage, using a photo of herself in her Eras Tour best, wearing a sparkly body suit and playing a pink guitar. She also filed two audio clips of her voice, one of her saying, “Hey, it’s Taylor Swift, and you can listen to my new album, The Life Of A Showgirl, on demand on Amazon Music Unlimited.” She also included another clip of her speaking in a lower register, saying, “Hey, it’s Taylor. My brand new album, The Life Of A Showgirl, is out on Oct. 3, and you can click to presave it so you can listen to it on Spotify.” 

Swift joins Matthew McConaughey in filing trademarks to protect their likeness from companies looking to slop-ify their products with fake endorsements from celebrity avatars or posthumously cast them in something called As Deep As The Grave. But it isn’t just the leaders of the free world exploiting her image. In 2024, months before Trump posted his fake endorsement, AI-generated Swift-lookalikes began hocking scams related to Le Creuset cookware on Facebook. “Hey y’all, it’s Taylor Swift here,” the deepfake of Swift said. “Due to a packaging error, we can’t sell 3,000 Le Creuset cookware sets. So I’m giving them away to my loyal fans for free.” This is exactly what McConaughey is worried about: an unsavory type using his image to offload 3,000 dutch ovens. In December 2025, McConaughey was granted the trademark to ahem “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.” That should cover him for the most part, but just in case, he filed an additional seven trademarks, including other lines from Dazed And Confused and a clip of him in front of a Christmas tree, but surprisingly little about how far he’ll go to get his clients a TiVo.

 
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