- Taylor Swift has filed three trademark applications to protect her sound and image from AI deepfakes
- It follows Matthew McConaughey's filings from January
- Her trademarks reflect the industry's increasing concerns, but smaller artists are still feeling the burn
AI interpretations are on the rise, and Taylor Swift is the latest artist to take a legal stance against the increasing threats.
Acting on behalf of the singer, Swift’s company TAS Management filed three trademark applications with the US Patent and Trademark Office on April 24, two of which relate to sound trademarks protecting Swift’s voice represented by the phrases ‘Hey, it's Taylor Swift’ and ‘Hey, it’s Taylor’ — which she’s known for saying several times during her live performances.
The third trademark relates to visual protections, where a photo of her ‘holding a pink guitar, with a black strap and wearing a multi-colored iridescent bodysuit with silver boots’ (as described in the application) has been used to represent her image. The filings were first spotted by intellectual property attorney Josh Gerben, but Swift’s team has yet to provide a comment on the status of the applications.
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At the moment, it’s quite an uncertain time to be a musician, or any public figure in entertainment for that matter, and Swift’s latest legal action shows how increasingly concerned artists are becoming for the safeguarding of their identities against AI. But Swift isn’t the first one to take action in this way.
Just like musicians, actors have also expressed concerns about losing control over their identities — the most recent example being Matthew McConaughey. Earlier this year, McConaughey trademarked himself saying ‘alright, alright, alright’ (his famous catchphrase from the 1993 movie Dazed and Confused) to implement tighter legal safeguards to make it easier to challenge potential AI misinterpretations.
If they were to be approved, Swift’s trademarks will provide similar protections according to Gerben’s blog post. “Theoretically, if a lawsuit were to be filed over an AI using Swift’s voice, she could claim that any use of her voice that sounds like the registered trademark violates her trademark rights,” he details.
Given her international status, there's no doubt that Swift’s trademark requests will be granted to warrant her safety, but not all artists have this privilege, and it’s the lesser-known musicians that are falling victim to fraudulent AI impersonations.
Back in January, folk singer Murphy Campbell faced every artist’s worst nightmare when she found a number of songs listed on her Spotify page that she had recorded, but never released, The Verge reported. She recalled noticing something ‘off’ about the vocals, and after running songs through multiple AI detectors, she concluded that they were AI-generated using live performance videos of the unreleased songs she uploaded to YouTube.
Although the fraudulent songs no longer appear to be available on platforms such as Apple Music, Campbell’s concerns are far from relaxed as there’s still a number of impersonation profiles with the same name — highlighting the responsibility that the best music streaming services have to protect their artists. As a result, Spotify has since rolled out a new approval system for artists that gives them control over what music appears on their profile. This will allow artists to approve and decline music when it’s submitted to Spotify in their name, helping to filter out any AI impersonations and deepfakes.
Despite the rise of these kinds of safety measures, the uncertainty of AI misuse will remain a worry for those in entertainment until firmer regulations are clamped down. Now that the biggest pop star in the world has kick-started her stance against AI imitation, it could serve as a catalyst for an influx of similar filings from other big artists with big reputations to protect.
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