ALEXANDRIA, VIRGINIA — Taylor Swift's company TAS Rights Management filed three trademark applications with the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office on April 24 in Alexandria, Virginia. Two of the applications are sound trademarks covering Swift saying the phrases "Hey, it's Taylor Swift" and "Hey, it's Taylor." The third application seeks to trademark a photograph of Swift holding a pink guitar with a black strap and wearing a multi-colored iridescent bodysuit with silver boots, standing on a pink stage in front of a multi-colored microphone with purple lights in the background.

The filings followed AI misuse of celebrities' voice and image and similar trademark filings by actor Matthew McConaughey. In 2025 the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office granted eight trademarks to McConaughey, including a sound mark of him saying "Alright, alright, alright!" and audio and video clips of him. "My team and I want to know that when my voice or likeness is ever used, it's because I approved and signed off on it. We want to create a clear perimeter around ownership with consent and attribution the norm in an AI world," McConaughey said.

Swift's likeness has been used in many AI images and deepfakes, including fake AI-created sexually explicit images. In early 2024, the social media platform X temporarily blocked users from searching for Swift's name after AI-generated explicit images depicting her began circulating. Later in 2024, Donald Trump posted AI-generated images on Truth Social that falsely showed Swift endorsing him for president.

Josh Gerben, an intellectual property attorney, addressed the legal terrain in a blog post. "Attempting to register a celebrity's spoken voice is a new use of trademark registration that has not been tested in court before," Gerben wrote. "By registering specific phrases tied to her voice, Swift could potentially challenge not only identical reproductions, but also imitations that are 'confusingly similar', a key standard in trademark law." He also wrote: "Historically, singers relied on copyright law to protect their recorded music. But AI technologies now allow users to generate entirely new content that mimics an artist's voice without copying an existing recording, creating a gap that trademarks may help fill."

Swift owns more than 50 trademarks related to her name, album titles, and key song lyrics. After releasing her album 1989 in 2014, she registered trademarks for the phrases "This sick beat" and "We never go out of style." In 2024 she trademarked "Female Rage: The Musical," referring to an Eras Tour segment in which she performed songs from her album The Tortured Poets Department.

In many U.S. states, including New York and California, right-of-publicity laws prevent unauthorized commercial use of a person's image and likeness. Trademark infringement lawsuits can be filed in federal court and apply nationwide. The NO FAKES Act, designed to protect people's voices and visual likeness from being exploited with AI, was introduced in Congress and remains under committee consideration.