Matthew McConaughey trademarks likeness as AI acting market grows
UT Austin town hall frames consent as enforceable IP not moral plea, Hollywood prepares to rent synthetic humans while calling it protection
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Matthew McConaughey is not waiting for Hollywood to finish its moral panic about generative AI. He is doing what rational actors do when a new copying machine arrives: drawing property lines.
At a CNN and Variety town hall at the University of Texas at Austin, McConaughey told students that pleading “this is wrong” will not stop AI from being used to synthesize performances. “There’s too much money to be made, and it’s too productive. It’s here,” he said, according to Business Insider. His advice to younger actors was blunt: “Own yourself—voice, likeness, etc. Trademark it.”
This is less a celebrity pep talk than a preview of how entertainment becomes a rights-and-identity licensing market. If faces and voices are now high-value datasets, the key asset is not talent but enforceable control: consent, attribution, and the ability to sue. McConaughey argues that trademarking and related protections create a perimeter so that anyone who wants to use a synthetic version of you must ask—and pay—or face federal court.
Business Insider notes that McConaughey has already secured eight trademarks connected to his likeness, including “alright, alright, alright,” the catchphrase that has been merchandised for decades and now doubles as a training target for voice and text models. He told The Wall Street Journal that he wants any use of his voice or likeness to be something he “approved and signed off on,” with consent and attribution as the default.
This is a market solution to a problem created by scale. AI does not “steal” in the old sense; it makes perfect, cheap substitutes. The response is to convert the self into a portfolio of licensable IP claims—trademarks, right-of-publicity contracts, and whatever new statutory patches legislators bolt on later. This favors those who can afford lawyers, registrations, and enforcement, while newcomers are told to paper-shield their identities before they even have bargaining power.
McConaughey also sits on both sides of the transaction. He is an investor in ElevenLabs, a voice-generation company, and the firm recently announced he is using its technology to produce a Spanish-language version of his newsletter. Yes, protect your likeness—so you can monetize it yourself.
For audiences, the coming fight is not about whether AI will appear on screen. It is about who controls the distribution rights to synthetic humans, how contracts define “performance,” and whether the default becomes opt-in consent—or the more Hollywood-friendly model: use first, litigate later.