How To Trademark A Guy In 8 Ways: An IP Strategy Against AI

2.11.26

American actor Matthew McConaughey has come up with a new way to protect against future misuse of his voice and likeness enabled by artificial intelligence tools.

To do so, McConaughey has turned to trademark law by registering a series of audio and video clips, including a clip of him saying the iconic phrase “alright, alright, alright,” from his breakthrough film “Dazed and Confused.” Several of these trademarks were successfully registered in late December.

A Time to Kill AI Misuse

McConaughey’s trademark strategy is a new and creative approach to protect against growing concern for AI replicating a person’s voice and likeness without that person’s permission.

As generative AI tools have become more sophisticated and accessible, AI users increasingly insert celebrities and public figures into AI-generated advertisements, voiceovers and social media content without approval. This content often takes the form of deepfakes, which are synthetic media created using AI to convincingly replicate a person’s face, voice or mannerisms.

Rights of publicity statutes may provide some recourse against this AI misuse, though these regimes are jurisdiction dependent. To date, no federal right of publicity law has been enacted.

In May 2025, President Donald Trump signed into law a narrowly tailored federal measure aimed at combating AI-generated deepfake revenge porn; however, broader federal efforts to regulate unauthorized use of a person’s voice and likeness have stalled.

Particularly, the proposed Nurture Originals, Foster Art and Keep Entertainment Safe Act has garnered bipartisan support, but has not yet been brought to a vote. Without comprehensive federal legislation, protection against much AI misuse largely depends on a patchwork of state statutes and common law doctrines.

While some states like Tennessee offer strong protection against unauthorized AI use, others lack such protection. For instance, in March 2024, Tennessee enacted the Ensuring Likeness, Voice and Image Security Act — a first-of-its-kind legislation targeting AI-generated deepfakes and soundalikes.

The ELVIS Act expands traditional publicity protection to explicitly protect both real and AI-generated voice replicas from unauthorized commercial use by defining voice as protected personal property, adding civil and criminal remedies, extending post-mortem rights, and even imposing limited secondary liability on AI tool providers.[1]

Following Tennessee’s lead, states like New York and California have codified similar legislation. By contrast, many states still rely on publicity laws that do not expressly address AI-generated content, leaving individuals with uneven and uncertain remedies depending on state lines.

An Interstellar Leap in Trademark Strategy

Given the limits of current protections, McConaughey has leveraged trademark law in a nontraditional manner to protect against future AI misuse. Trademark law protects source identifiers, often taking shape as word or design marks like brand names or logos.

McConaughey has attempted to take this a step further than the conventional strategy, registering trademarks as sensory marks or motion marks that cover sounds and visuals that indicate source.

Consider how the phrase “alright, alright, alright,” has become so closely associated with McConaughey that most people instinctively hear his voice when they read it such that the phrase serves as a source identifier linked to the actor.

By registering sensory and motion marks, McConaughey is not just capturing the words themselves but the recognizable delivery and tone that consumers associate with him as a brand.

For example, the sensory mark for “alright, alright, alright” is described as a man saying that phrase, “wherein the first syllable of the first two words is at a lower pitch than the second syllable, and the first syllable of the last word is at a higher pitch than the second syllable.”

Just Keep Registerin’, Right?

Accordingly, McConaughey has successfully registered eight trademarks with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, signaling a deliberate effort to bring elements of his persona within the scope of trademark protection.

These registrations include a three-second clip of McConaughey sitting in front of a Christmas tree, and an audio clip beginning with the actor saying “Just keep livin’, right?” followed by a pause, “I mean,” followed by another pause and ending with “What else are we gonna do?” Each trademark is registered to J.K. Livin Brands Inc., which is the parent company of McConaughey’s Just Keep Livin apparel line.

Will the Strategy Hold Up in Mud?

While the trademark registrations allow McConaughey to sue in federal court, the effectiveness of McConaughey’s trademark strategy may be limited. Particularly because courts have not previously addressed a strategy like this, the durability of the registrations under validity scrutiny remains uncertain.

For instance, a potential challenge to his marks will include whether McConaughey used the audio and visual clips in a way that qualifies as “use in commerce,” as required for a mark to be valid.

Additionally, trademark protection may falter when the appropriation isn’t an exact imitation of the registered mark. The touchstone for trademark infringement is likelihood of consumer confusion with respect to a specific source identifier.

Therefore, AI-generated content that evokes a person’s voice and likeness without exactly replicating the registered mark at issue may fall beyond the practical reach of trademark law.

Accordingly, depending on the jurisdiction, rights of publicity statutes may offer broader protection than trademark law, since those statutes may protect any sound readily attributable to a specific individual and not just a specific phrase like “alright, alright, alright.” Still, the registrations likely work in tandem with the available rights of publicity laws to patch together meaningful protection for McConaughey’s persona.

Every Brand Needs a Lincoln Lawyer

As evident through emerging legislation and McConaughey’s novel trademark strategy, attorneys, legislators and courts alike are working to craft the necessary protections to safeguard intellectual property in the AI era.

McConaughey’s own team of lawyers vhas creatively employed existing IP tools to get ahead of AI misuse as well as signal to potential infringers that their client takes his IP seriously.

For attorneys advising public figures and organizations alike, this development underscores the value of implementing a multiregime strategy and extending existing legal frameworks beyond their traditional applications to protect client brands amid a rapidly evolving technological landscape.

Previously published by LAW360: Summer Basham Todd, How To Trademark A Guy In 8 Ways: An IP Strategy Against AI, Law360, Feb. 9, 2026 https://www.law360.com/articles/2435116.

Summer Basham Todd | Associate Attorney