Taylor Swift’s AI trademark filings reveal the gap copyright law cannot fill- What expert said – Crypto News

When Taylor Swift’s intellectual property firm filed trademark applications in April 2026 covering short audio clips of her voice and her visual likeness, the move was widely read as a celebrity legal manoeuvre. Legal scholars say it reveals something more consequential: a structural gap in artificial intelligence law that copyright protections alone are not equipped to close.

The assessment comes from Daryl Lim, Associate Dean for Research and Strategic Partnerships at Penn State, writing in Fortune, who argues that Swift’s filings signal a fundamental shift in how the law is being asked to respond to AI-generated identity fraud, one that reaches well beyond the debate over copied songs and scraped datasets.

Taylor Swift’s AI Trademark Filings: What TAS Rights Management Is Claiming

Swift’s company, TAS Rights Management, filed the trademark applications in April 2026 following a sustained pattern of AI-generated misuse. Fabricated nude imagery of the singer has spread across the internet, whilst her voice and likeness have appeared in manufactured political messaging and counterfeit product endorsements she never sanctioned.

The filings do not concern her recordings, lyrics or albums. They are aimed at a different legal problem: whether AI-generated versions of her voice or image could deceive the public into believing she has endorsed a product, a political position or a cause she has never approved.

Why Copyright Law Cannot Fully Protect Taylor Swift From AI Deepfakes

The majority of AI-related litigation to date has centred on copyright law, which shields creative works, including songs, books, photographs, recordings and journalism, from being copied, distributed, adapted or performed without authorisation.

The pattern is well established in the courts. The New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft in 2023, alleging that the companies trained their AI systems on its journalism, generating outputs that competed with or reproduced the outlet’s reporting. Authors, publishers, photograph agencies and music publishers have brought parallel claims against other AI companies.

But copyright does not automatically protect a person’s identity. It does not grant Swift a general right to control anything that sounds like her, looks like her or calls her to mind in the audience’s imagination.

The critical limitation, according to Lim’s analysis, is this: if an AI-generated voice imitates Swift without copying a specific recording, song or lyric, copyright law may not address the genuine harm, which is the false impression that she said, sang or approved something she never did.

How Trademark Law Could Protect Taylor Swift’s Voice and Likeness From AI Misuse

Trademark law starts from an entirely different set of concerns. It protects names, images, sounds and other identifiers that help consumers establish who or what stands behind a product or service.

Familiar examples include brand names such as Coca-Cola, logos such as the Nike swoosh, slogans such as Subway’s “Eat Fresh” and distinctive sounds such as the MGM lion roar.

A trademark is not a blanket ownership claim over a word, phrase, voice or image. It is a legal tool for ensuring that consumers know who stands behind what they are buying, hearing or seeing.

That distinction becomes critical once AI can convincingly replicate a person’s voice or appearance. If a company uses an AI-generated voice resembling Swift’s to sell perfume or cryptocurrency, and listeners conclude that she approved of the product, that constitutes a trademark problem. Trademark law asks whether the use misleads consumers about whether a company or person has produced or endorsed something. Swift’s filings appear directed precisely at that concern.

Publicity Rights and AI: Why Patchwork US State Laws Are Falling Short

Swift’s concerns also intersect with what are known as publicity rights, which protect individuals against the unauthorised commercial use of their identity, including name, image, likeness or voice.

A widely cited example involves a company using a celebrity’s face in advertising without permission to create the impression of endorsement. AI’s capacity to clone voices and images makes this body of law particularly relevant to the current moment.

The difficulty, in the US, is that publicity rights are governed almost entirely by state law, and the rules vary substantially from one jurisdiction to another. That fragmentation is a central motivation behind the bipartisan NO FAKES Act, introduced in 2025, which would establish a national standard prohibiting unauthorised AI-generated replicas of a person’s voice or visual likeness. The bill has been referred to the Senate Judiciary Committee and remains at an early stage.

Matthew McConaughey and the Growing Use of Trademark Law Against AI Identity Fraud

Swift is not the only public figure to pursue this route. Actor Matthew McConaughey has trademarked “alright alright alright,” his widely recognised line from the 1993 film “Dazed and Confused,” specifically to guard against its exploitation in AI-generated content.

Courts have already affirmed that sounds can function as trademarks. The unresolved legal question is whether trademark law can effectively police AI-generated replicas of a person’s voice or image in cases that do not involve straightforward counterfeiting, but the manufacture of a false endorsement.

To qualify for trademark protection, a voice or likeness must demonstrably help consumers identify who is behind a product or service. That status is not automatic or assumed.

Where Courts Will Draw the Line on AI-Generated Celebrity Endorsements

Federal law in the US already protects certain uses of a celebrity’s image or likeness, including parody, criticism, commentary and news reporting. Not every imitation rises to the level of deception.

Courts are expected to establish the boundaries case by case. A fabricated advertisement designed to make consumers believe Swift endorsed a product is legally distinct from a parody that comments on the nature of celebrity culture. A scam exploiting her voice differs fundamentally from a news report examining the spread of AI deepfakes.

What Swift’s filings make plain, according to Lim, is that major AI copyright cases will continue to focus on copied works. But when AI is used to manufacture identity, endorsement or trust, copyright alone is no longer a sufficient instrument. The law will increasingly need to protect not only the creative output of musicians, writers, journalists and artists, but also the signals that tell audiences who is genuinely speaking.