{"id":11058,"date":"2026-06-27T17:09:05","date_gmt":"2026-06-27T17:09:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/backstreet-boys-trademark-their-voices-as-stars-fight-ai-deepfakes\/"},"modified":"2026-06-27T17:09:05","modified_gmt":"2026-06-27T17:09:05","slug":"backstreet-boys-trademark-their-voices-as-stars-fight-ai-deepfakes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/backstreet-boys-trademark-their-voices-as-stars-fight-ai-deepfakes\/","title":{"rendered":"Backstreet Boys Trademark Their Voices As Stars Fight AI Deepfakes"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n\tBackstreet Boys are moving to trademark the sound of their voices, joining Taylor Swift and a growing chorus of music stars trying to protect themselves from voice cloning and AI deepfakes.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a filing Wednesday (June 24) at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, the iconic boy band applied for a trademark registration on an audio clip of the band saying \u201cHi, we\u2019re the Backstreet Boys.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n\tLionel Richie applied to trademark his voice earlier this month, and Swift did the same months before that. Music\u2019s biggest stars are concerned about the power of AI to create realistic fake content on the internet \u2014 and about their current lack of legal weapons to fight them.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe filings, obtained and reviewed by Billboard<\/em>, were first reported by Josh Gerben, a trademark attorney unaffiliated with the matter. They cite an audio clip of the band\u2019s five members yelling that line in unison. The band\u2019s attorney did not immediately return a request for comment on Friday (June 26).<\/p>\n

\n\tTrademarks on sounds are relatively rare. NBC owns one on its famous chimes, and AFLAC owns one on a duck quacking its name, but trademarks far more often cover brand names, logos and other visual symbols that help consumers identify goods and services.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe growth of AI technology has made it far easier to mimic voices, flooding the internet with such misleading content and leaving stars with little recourse. An individual\u2019s name, likeness and voice have historically been guarded by right of publicity laws, but those laws have key limitations and no federal statute is squarely designed to address the problem.<\/p>\n

\n\tA federal law designed to address that problem, the NO FAKES Act, passed a key Congressional committee last week and has a growing coalition supporting it. The bill would ban digital replicas of someone\u2019s voice or visual likeness and require tech platforms to remove such content.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the absence of such legislation, celebrities have turned to stopgap measures, including utilizing those old state likeness laws, or citing copyrighted content. Another is trademarking voices. Swift applied in April to register her voice saying \u201cHey, it\u2019s Taylor\u201d; Richie applied earlier this month, including his lyric \u201cHello, is it me you\u2019re looking for?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSuch filings are an imperfect solution, and it remains unclear how effective they\u2019ll be. Trademark law protects specific symbols, not a person\u2019s overall identity; even if they win their trademark, it\u2019s far from certain that it would give the Backstreet Boys any real legal power to stop someone from using their voice for different<\/em> words. They also face hurdles just to get the trademarks in the first place, including trying to prove that consumers associate their specific sound mark with particular goods or services.<\/p>\n


\"Billboard
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