{"id":233759,"date":"2026-01-15T01:31:19","date_gmt":"2026-01-15T01:31:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/233759\/"},"modified":"2026-01-15T01:31:19","modified_gmt":"2026-01-15T01:31:19","slug":"matthew-mcconaughey-trademarks-voice-and-likeness-to-fight-ai-deepfakes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/233759\/","title":{"rendered":"Matthew McConaughey trademarks voice and likeness to fight AI deepfakes"},"content":{"rendered":"

McConaughey\u2019s lawyers from the entertainment law firm Yorn Levine said the applications were intended to protect their client\u2019s voice and likeness from unauthorised AI use, according to Variety.<\/p>\n

Deepfakes are images, audio, or video material generated by artificial intelligence to simulate a person\u2019s appearance and voice.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know what a court will say in the end, but we have to at least test this,\u201d said firm partner Kevin Yorn.<\/p>\n

Variety reported the firm also secured trademarks for a seven-second video of McConaughey standing on a porch, and a three-second video of him standing in front of a Christmas tree.<\/p>\n

They also won trademarks for an audio clip featuring the actor saying: \u201cJust keep living, right? … I mean … what are we gonna do?\u201d<\/p>\n

Deepfakes of figures such as Taylor Swift, Tom Hanks and Oprah Winfrey have been used to create fake endorsements of products and Ponzi schemes.<\/p>\n

Elon Musk came under fire this month after Grok, the AI chatbot on social media platform X, formerly Twitter, was used to generate fake pornographic photos<\/a>, including of women and children.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn a world where we\u2019re watching everybody scramble to figure out what to do about AI misuse, we have a tool now to stop someone in their tracks or take them to federal court,\u201d Yorn Levine attorney Jonathan Pollack said.<\/p>\n

Some stars have previously had trademarks approved for their catchphrases, like Paris Hilton\u2019s \u201cThat\u2019s hot\u201d and Lizzo\u2019s \u201d100% that B****\u201c.<\/p>\n

However, McConaughey is believed to be the first to obtain a comprehensive trademark over himself, according to the Telegraph.<\/p>\n

Despite the trademarks, McConaughey is not opposed to AI technology.<\/p>\n

The Telegraph reported the 56-year-old has invested in AI audio company ElevenLabs, which he is working with to generate Spanish-language audio versions of his newsletter Lyrics of Livin\u2019 in his own voice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"McConaughey\u2019s lawyers from the entertainment law firm Yorn Levine said the applications were intended to protect their client\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":233760,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[3376,365,95,9556,363,364,682,43361,15124,71,4223,138541,74672,3369,41676,111,139,69,30308,145,2846,61,59834,138540,13797,11548],"class_list":["post-233759","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-actor","tag-ai","tag-and","tag-artificial","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-being","tag-deepfakes","tag-fight","tag-from","tag-hollywood","tag-intelligencegenerated","tag-likeness","tag-matthew","tag-mcconaughey","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-protect","tag-technology","tag-them","tag-to","tag-trademarked","tag-trademarks","tag-used","tag-voice"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233759","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=233759"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233759\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/233760"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=233759"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=233759"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=233759"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}