Taylor Swift is seemingly taking on AI.
The 36-year-old The Life of a Showgirl superstar has filed three trademark applications through her company TAS Rights Management with the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office.
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According to a new report, the paperwork was filed Friday (April 24), with two of them covering her voice: one is “Hey, it’s Taylor Swift,” and the other is “Hey, it’s Taylor,” per Variety.
The third trademark is a visual trademark that covers “a photograph of Taylor Swift holding a pink guitar, with a black strap and wearing a multi-colored iridescent bodysuit with silver boots. She is standing on a pink stage in front of a multi-colored microphone with purple lights in the background.” You can see the photo in question here.
Josh Gerben, trademark attorney and founder of Gerben IP, noted that these applications may to be prevent AI use in his law company’s blog, writing: “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. The image-based filing serves a similar purpose. By protecting a distinctive visual, down to Swift’s commonly worn jumpsuit and pose, Swift’s team may gain additional grounds to pursue claims against manipulated or AI-generated images that evoke her likeness.”
Stars like Michael Caine and Matthew McConaughey have teamed up with an AI company called ElevenLabs to produce virtual replications of their voices.