Matthew McConaughey has filed eight trademark applications with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office covering clips of him staring, smiling, standing on a porch, and saying "alright, alright, alright." The filings were approved over the past several months, according to reporting from the Wall Street Journal on January 14th.
This is weird. Not just "celebrity doing legal stuff" weird, but "let's see if this actually works in court" weird.
The strategy nobody's tried
State right-of-publicity laws already make it illegal to steal someone's likeness for commercial purposes. But McConaughey's team doesn't trust them. The laws vary by state, enforcement is slow, and nobody knows how they apply to AI-generated content that might not technically be "commercial" even when platforms profit from it indirectly.
So they went federal.
By registering his voice and image as trademarks, McConaughey's lawyers can now threaten federal court action against anyone using his likeness without permission. The theory is that an unauthorized deepfake isn't just a privacy violation. It's trademark infringement. Consumer confusion about whether McConaughey actually endorsed something.
Kevin Yorn, one of McConaughey's attorneys, was candid about the uncertainty. He told the Journal that they're essentially testing the system. Courts haven't ruled on this yet. But at minimum, the trademarks give them leverage.
What's actually trademarked
The specifics are almost comically detailed. One trademark covers a seven-second video of McConaughey standing on a porch. Another covers three seconds of him sitting in front of a Christmas tree. There's audio of "alright, alright, alright" from the 1993 film Dazed and Confused, described with phonetic precision.
The trademarks are registered to J.K. Livin Brands Inc., the parent company of his Just Keep Livin apparel business.
McConaughey's lawyers say they're not aware of any unauthorized AI deepfakes targeting him yet. This is preemptive.
The irony problem
Here's where it gets interesting. McConaughey isn't anti-AI. He's an investor in ElevenLabs, the voice-cloning startup that announced the partnership in November 2025. The company created an AI version of his voice to produce a Spanish-language edition of his newsletter, Lyrics of Livin'. With his permission.
And he's the face of Salesforce's Agentforce campaign, appearing in Super Bowl ads alongside Woody Harrelson to promote autonomous AI agents. Reports put his Salesforce deal at over $10 million annually.
So McConaughey is simultaneously protecting himself from AI misuse while profiting from AI development. His position is that consent and attribution should be the norm. He told the Journal he wants "a clear perimeter around ownership."
Make of that what you will.
The legal landscape is a mess
Federal deepfake legislation exists now, but it's narrow. The TAKE IT DOWN Act, signed in May 2025, criminalizes non-consensual intimate imagery and requires platforms to remove it within 48 hours. That covers revenge porn and explicit deepfakes. It doesn't help if someone clones your voice to sell crypto.
The NO FAKES Act, which would create a federal right of publicity for digital replicas, was reintroduced in April 2025 with bipartisan support and backing from SAG-AFTRA, the Recording Academy, and OpenAI. It hasn't passed yet.
McConaughey's trademark approach is essentially a workaround while Congress figures things out.
Why this might matter beyond Hollywood
UCLA law professor Mark McKenna pointed out the gap in current protections. Ad-monetized content on YouTube or TikTok exists in legal limbo. The platform makes money. The deepfake creator might not directly. Is that commercial use? Nobody's certain.
If McConaughey's strategy holds up, other celebrities will follow. Lizzo already trademarked "100% That Bitch," but McConaughey appears to be the first to trademark himself broadly. His team is betting that celebrity identities can function like brands, deserving the same federal protections as corporate logos.
What happens next
SAG-AFTRA is watching closely. The 2023 strike put AI likeness protections at the center of Hollywood labor negotiations. Studios agreed to disclose AI-generated material and restrict its use without performer consent. But contractual protections only go so far. Federal law would be better.
For now, McConaughey has his trademarks. Whether they'll actually stop a deepfake from going viral is another question. But his lawyers have something they didn't have before: a federal courthouse.
