This is the future: Artists trademarking their sound and image to protect against deepfakes
Deepfakes and other forms of online fraud and identity theft are a major problem. Musicians are constantly being ripped off as others steal their sound and image.
Taylor Swift is as mad as help and isn’t going to take it anymore.
On Friday (April 24), she filed a trademark application using two audio clips of her voice. One is “Hey, it’s Taylor Swift, and you can listen to my new album, The Life of a Showgirl on Amazon Music Unlimited.” The other features her saying, “Hey, it’s Taylor. My brand new album The Life of a Showgirl is out on Oct. 3, and you can click to presave it so you can listen to it on Spotify.” The clips came with a photo of her in a sparkly jumpsuit holding a pink guitar.
The goal is to protect her sound and image against AI-generated deepfakes, something that’s she’s had to fight for years. (Remember the Fake Taylor cookware scam?) If someone should be evil enough to steal her sound and likeness, a trademark will make it easier to prosecute the scammer.
Plenty of celebrities are doing this, including actors like Matthew McConaughey. And “sound marks” have been around for a while. Just try copying the Pillsbury Doughboy’s giggle and watch the lawyer pounce. But what’s new here is the attempt to register a celebrity’s speaking voice.
This trend will only build as people seek to protect themselves. There will be all sorts of challenges to this as things need to be clarified vis-à-vis parody, free speech, and fair comment, of course, but all we really need is one strong case to set a precedent.
Me? I’m in favour of what Denmark has done, which is to automatically give regular people copyright to their images.
