When Taylor Swift launched her latest album, The Life of a Showgirl, in October 2025, she recorded two short clips to promote it. One for Amazon Music began with “Hey, it’s Taylor Swift”. Another, for Spotify with “Hey, it’s Taylor”.
These two phrases may sound a little mundane, but they’re now at the frontline of a legal fightback by celebrities like Swift against AI deepfakes. In April, Swift’s intellectual property company, TAS Right Management, applied to the US Patent and Trademark office to trademark them as registered sound marks, along with a photo of her, from her recent Eras tour.
In this episode of The Conversation Weekly podcast, we speak to an expert in intellectual property law, Graeme Austin, to understand why Swift took this route, and the different ways celebrities are trying to protect themselves against AI deepfakes. And if you’re not a celebrity with a large legal team, what can you do?
Taylor Swift’s army of intellectual property lawyers are “really trying to create a wall around her image,” says Austin. He says it’s unclear how the trademarks, if awarded, will protect her, but suggests that they “could serve a deterrent effect” and provide her with specific protections against fake product endorsements.
While many countries now have criminal laws to protect against the dissemination fo sexual deepfake material, Austin says “there isn’t the same kind of consensus around non-sexual deepfakes”. As a result, he says those targeted are turning to civil suits. For example, in India, Bollywood stars Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and Anil Kapoor have successfully sued using civil law to protect themselves against deepfakes.
Listen to Austin talk about the legal routes to fightback against deepfakes on The Conversation Weekly podcast.
This episode of The Conversation Weekly was written and produced by Gemma Ware and Mend Mariwany. Mixing by Michelle Macklem and theme music by Neeta Sarl.
Newsclips in this episode from US Patent and Trademark Office, NBC News, NBC Montana, WhiteHatWes and NDTV.
Listen to The Conversation Weekly via any of the apps listed above, download it directly via our RSS feed or find out how else to listen here. A transcript of this episode is available via the Apple Podcasts or Spotify apps.
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
