Taylor Swift’s AI trademark highlights artist protection gap<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\nWhen Taylor Swift’s management filed three trademark applications with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on Friday, the music industry applauded. The filing quietly confirmed that legal protection against AI impersonation is becoming a privilege reserved for artists who can afford lawyers to pursue it.<\/p>\n
Acting through her company TAS Management, Swift filed two sound trademarks to protect her voice, specifically the phrases “Hey, it’s Taylor Swift” and “Hey, it’s Taylor,” phrases she regularly performs during live performances. <\/p>\n
A third application covers a visual trademark, using a photo of Swift in a distinctive rainbow bodysuit and silver shoes to formally establish her image rights.<\/p>\n
Intellectual property attorney Josh Gerben, who first identified the filings, explained their practical function: If an AI system reproduces a voice that matches a registered trademark, the rights holder can pursue a trademark infringement claim on a significantly cleaner legal path than existing options. Approval is considered almost certain for an artist with Swift’s resources and global recognition.<\/p>\n
Folk singer Murphy Campbell had no such safety net. In January, Campbell found several songs listed on his Spotify profile as tracks that he had recorded but never released. The tone seemed a bit wrong. <\/p>\n
After testing them with various software designed to detect such instances, he discovered that they were created using video clips of performances posted on YouTube, which were then scraped to reproduce their yet-to-be-released songs.<\/p>\n
Although the fake audio files have been removed from the sites where they appeared, fake profiles using her name are still operational. Campbell’s case is a perfect example of the risk faced by artists who do not have a lawyer and other types of protection that could help them get immediate feedback from site administrators before too much damage is done.<\/p>\n
As a response to impersonation, Spotify now allows artists to approve or disapprove the uploading of their music to its platform. This is important progress. But the problem remains because the mechanism itself does not prevent such impersonations but instead reacts to them, and it all depends on whether artists use Spotify as a tool to monitor their work. <\/p>\n
Earlier this year, the same Matthew McConaughey decided to save himself by registering the famous slogan “Okay, okay, okay”, which he used in the 1993 film Dazed and Confused.<\/p>\n
And we have the same old story once again \u2013 famous artistes are protecting themselves with all the necessary mechanisms in place, while the system protecting everyone else is still missing.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n