“Own yourself.” That is the advice Matthew McConaughey recently gave to actors in a conversation with Timothée Chalamet about the rise of artificial intelligence. His message was direct: protect your name, your image, your likeness, and your voice before someone else figures out how to use them without asking. Because in 2026, that conversation is no longer just for Hollywood. It is for founders, executives, creators, and any professional whose identity carries commercial value.
In Episode 54 of Letters of Intent, Pankaj Raval and Sahil Chaudry of Carbon Law Group break down the legal reality behind McConaughey’s advice. They explore whether you can trademark your voice, how state Right of Publicity laws protect you when copyright falls short, what contract red flags to watch for in AI licensing deals, and why the idea of an “Automated CEO” is far more complicated than it sounds.
Here is what every business owner needs to understand right now.
Can You Actually Trademark Your Voice?
The short answer is yes, under the right conditions. The longer answer involves understanding what a trademark actually does.
A trademark is a source identifier. Its entire job is to tell consumers where a product or service comes from. When you hear the THX sound at a movie theater, you immediately know what it represents. That sound is a registered trademark. The same logic applies to voices.
For a voice to qualify as a trademark, it must meet two requirements. First, it must be distinctive. The voice needs to be recognizable enough that consumers associate it with a specific person or brand. Second, it must be used in commerce. The voice has to play an active role in promoting or selling goods or services.
Think about Morgan Freeman. His voice is immediately recognizable. Audiences associate it with a specific tone, credibility, and warmth. He uses that voice commercially in narration, advertising, and film. That combination of distinctiveness and commercial use creates a strong argument for trademark protection.
Matthew McConaughey makes an even more obvious case. Hear the words “all right, all right, all right” and you instantly know who is speaking. That level of recognition is exactly what trademark law is designed to protect.
The legal landscape is still evolving. Courts have sometimes limited voice protection, but landmark cases like Bette Midler’s lawsuit over the unauthorized use of her voice have opened the door. As AI makes it easier than ever to replicate voices, expect courts to take a harder look at extending trademark protections in this space.
For business owners and professionals who rely on their voice, personality, or public identity to generate revenue, now is the time to consult a business attorney about what protections are available. At Carbon Law Group, we help clients understand their options across trademark, copyright, and Right of Publicity law.
The Right of Publicity: Your Most Underused Protection
Even when trademark and copyright claims are hard to establish, there is another layer of protection that many people overlook: the Right of Publicity.
The Right of Publicity is a legal doctrine that protects individuals from having their name, image, likeness, or voice commercially exploited without their consent. Unlike federal trademark law, the Right of Publicity is primarily a state law claim. That means the strength of your protection depends on where you live and work.
California has one of the strongest Right of Publicity statutes in the country. Under California law, a person has the right to control how their identity is used for commercial purposes. That protection extends beyond celebrities. It applies to anyone whose identity carries commercial value.
Here is why this matters in the age of AI. If a company trains an AI model on your voice recordings, your interviews, or your video content without your permission and then uses that AI to generate commercial content, California’s Right of Publicity law gives you a direct legal claim. You do not have to prove trademark infringement or copyright ownership. You simply have to demonstrate that your identity was used commercially without your consent.
For small business owners, this is particularly relevant. Founders and executives often build personal brands alongside their companies. They speak at events, record podcasts, appear in marketing videos, and create a public persona that directly drives business. That persona has commercial value. Protecting it proactively is not optional. It is a strategic business decision.
Working with an attorney who understands both state Right of Publicity law and the evolving landscape of AI regulation puts you in a far stronger position than waiting until your likeness appears somewhere you never authorized.
AI Licensing Contracts: Three Red Flags You Cannot Afford to Miss
Let us say a company approaches you with an exciting offer. They want to train an AI model using your voice, your image, or your likeness as part of their marketing platform. The money sounds good. The opportunity seems interesting. Before you sign anything, there are three critical contract issues you need to resolve.
The Termination Problem
Many AI licensing contracts contain a provision that grants the company a license to use your likeness for the duration of the agreement. That sounds reasonable. However, the problem appears in the fine print. When you terminate the contract, your right to receive payments ends. But the company’s license to use the AI model they built from your likeness may continue.
That means you could walk away from the deal, stop receiving compensation, and still find your digital replica being used in campaigns you never approved. Make sure your contract explicitly states that the license terminates when the agreement ends. No exceptions.
The Usage Rights Problem
Modeling and talent contracts have long recognized the importance of usage restrictions. You can license your image for e-commerce use without authorizing its use in editorial spreads. You can approve a campaign in one geographic market while excluding others.
The same principles apply to AI licensing. Specify exactly what your image or voice can promote. If you are uncomfortable having your likeness associated with gambling, alcohol, or certain political campaigns, those restrictions must be in writing. Your attorney should negotiate clear usage limits before you sign, because a vague contract defaults in the company’s favor.
The Exclusivity Problem
Buried deep in many AI licensing agreements is an exclusivity clause. Once you license your likeness to one company, that clause may prevent you from licensing it to anyone else for the duration of the agreement. For a major celebrity, one lucrative exclusive deal might justify that restriction. For most professionals and small business owners, a single deal is unlikely to cover all future income opportunities.
Before you sign, make sure you understand exactly what exclusivity means in that specific contract. How long does it last? Does it cover all industries or only specific ones? Can you continue working with direct competitors? These questions need clear answers in writing, not verbal assurances.
At Carbon Law Group, we review and negotiate AI licensing agreements for clients across Los Angeles and Southern California. We know where the traps are and how to remove them before they become problems.
The Automated CEO: A Compelling Idea That Falls Apart in Practice
One of the more provocative trends in the AI space right now is the concept of the Automated CEO. The idea is straightforward. You clone an executive’s voice, appearance, and communication style. You train an AI model on their past decisions, public statements, and management philosophy. Then you deploy that AI to handle internal communications, answer employee questions, and even make certain operational decisions.
Mark Zuckerberg’s team has reportedly explored this concept. The vision is efficiency at scale. Why should a CEO spend hours answering the same questions from employees when an AI trained on their knowledge base can handle those interactions automatically?
Here is the problem. Employees are not looking for a knowledge base. They are looking for a leader.
Leadership is not a data set. It is accumulated over years of lived experience, unexpected challenges, personal relationships, and situational judgment that cannot be reduced to training data. A 43-year-old founder brings decades of context to every decision, including experiences that never made it into any document, meeting recording, or public statement. An AI model trained on publicly available information will miss most of that.
Consider a creative director deciding whether to greenlight a major campaign. That decision might hinge on the energy in a room, a gut feeling about a particular collaborator, or a lesson learned from a failure five years ago that never appeared in any official report. An AI clone cannot replicate that process.
There is also a trust problem. Employees follow leaders because they believe those leaders are genuinely present and accountable. If an executive replaces themselves with an AI avatar and asks their team to engage with it instead, the message being sent is clear: your questions are not worth my time. That breeds resentment, not engagement.
AI has genuine value in business operations. It speeds up first drafts, processes large datasets, handles repetitive tasks, and supports decision-making with structured information. But leadership requires human context, human agency, and human accountability. An AI clone offers none of those things.
The Automated CEO is a fascinating experiment. For most companies, it will be a cautionary tale.
What This Means for Your Business Right Now
You do not need to be a Hollywood actor or a Silicon Valley executive for any of this to matter. If you run a business, build a personal brand, speak publicly, create content, or simply have a distinctive professional identity, the questions raised by AI replicas apply directly to you.
The legal landscape is changing quickly. New California laws already require written consent before a company can use your voice or likeness to train an AI model. Federal legislation is moving in a similar direction. Courts are beginning to hear Right of Publicity claims in AI contexts. The window to get ahead of these issues is open right now, but it will not stay open indefinitely.
Here is what you should be doing today. Review any contracts you have already signed that involve your name, image, or likeness. Look for perpetual license language, buried exclusivity clauses, and vague usage rights. If you find any of those, get legal advice before the contract renews or expands.
If you are entering a new AI licensing deal, do not sign anything without an attorney reviewing it first. The compensation may look attractive, but the rights you give up could be worth far more in the long run.
If you want to proactively protect your voice or identity, talk to a trademark attorney about whether you meet the distinctiveness and commercial use requirements for a voice trademark. Explore whether a formal Right of Publicity registration or licensing structure makes sense for your situation.
At Carbon Law Group, we work with founders, creators, executives, and small business owners across Los Angeles to help them understand and protect their most valuable assets. In 2026, your identity is one of the most important ones.
Schedule a consultation with our team at carbonlg.com. We will review your situation, explain your options in plain language, and help you build the legal foundation you need. McConaughey was right. Own yourself. In the world of AI, people who control their own identity will always have the leverage. The ones who wait will find out too late that someone else already claimed it. Do not be the cautionary tale. Be the business owner who saw it coming and prepared accordingly. Contact Carbon Law Group today.