In 2024, award-winning singer songwriter Taylor Swift became the victim of a wave of pornographic deepfakes flooding social media feeds. The controversy set the stage for a pandemic of nonconsensual AI-generated nudes, forcing big tech companies into damage control mode and even striking up a political brawl during the runup to the 2024 presidential elections.
Even at the time, Swift’s lawyers were no strangers to their client being the subject of harassment. Almost a decade previously, Swift bought the web addresses TaylorSwift.porn and TaylorSwift.adult right before they went public in 2015, ensuring that nobody could use the domains for any abusive purposes.
At the time, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the international regulatory body and nonprofit that presides over the internet’s databases and generic top-level domains (TLD), like .com, had recently broadened the available list, prompting public figures to jump into action.
Now, according to an October 7 ICANN application, Taylor Swift’s TAS Rights Management company, a Tennessee-based IP holding and management company established to protect Swift’s copyrights, brand assets, and trademarks, has applied for the rights to yet another top-level domain: .taylorswift.
Thanks to the proliferation of AI agents, setting up a new website — like official.taylorswift, for instance — has also become far more accessible than it was just a few years ago, giving copycats a major leg up.
“We intend to operate the .TAYLORSWIFT TLD as a dotBrand TLD where all domain registrations will be restricted to Affiliate organizations (as defined in the Registry Agreement) and, potentially, to licensees of our trademarks,” Swift’s LLC wrote in its application. “We will implement a strict registration approval process to ensure registrations are limited to these types of registrants.”
On Wednesday, the ICANN revealed over 1,600 new applications for generic top level domains (gTLDs) so far this year, including 333 brand applications. Before .taylorswift gets officially ratified, the ICANN will open a community input period, which ends in March 2027, with approvals following in the “first half” of next year.
Other brand applications include .adidas, .bankofamerica, .tiktok, and .shopify. Meta’s Registry Holdings submitted a whopping 15, including .aiglasses, .instagram, .metaglasses, .muse, and .whatsapp.
As part of her efforts to protect her own brand in the age of AI, in April Swift applied to trademark her voice and appearance. At the time, she lodged three applications in the US — currently still pending — including a photo of herself on stage and two audio clips of her introducing herself.
Months earlier, Hollywood star Matthew McConaughey filed eight trademark applications, featuring videos and audio clips of him “staring, smiling and talking.”
“My team and I want to know that when my voice or likeness is ever used, it’s because I approved and signed off on it,” he told the Wall Street Journal at the time. “We want to create a clear perimeter around ownership with consent and attribution the norm in an AI world.”
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