Canadian rapper Tory Lanez, whose legal name is Daystar Shemuel Shua Peterson, in 2022 was found guilty of shooting fellow artist Megan Thee Stallion, whose legal name is Megan Pete, in the feet. It happened in July 2020 after they left a party hosted by fellow celebrity Kylie Jenner.
As the story unfolded, people interested in celebrity news wanted to know more, even if the news may have been fake. Milagro Elizabeth Cooper—using social media accounts on X, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube with handles including @MobzWorld, @milagrogramz and @MobRadio—made many fake posts about Megan and was on Lanez’s payroll, according to a lawsuit Megan filed against Cooper in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida. Lanez is not a party in the complaint.
Cooper also liked and urged followers to view a deepfake video of Megan posted on X, the complaint states.
In 2025, a jury found Cooper liable for defaming Megan. Megan was awarded $75,000 in damages, $50,000 of which were for “promotion of an altered sexual depiction,” the verdict form states. Also, as of June, the MobzWorld account was suspended by X.
“We’re in the Wild Wild West where people have these platforms. They have a following, and if their platform becomes tearing down a celebrity, and they become more popular because of it, then they continue to do so,” says Mari Henderson, a Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan partner who represented Megan in the case.
Cooper has filed a notice of appeal. Nathacha Bien-Aimé, Cooper’s attorney, did not respond to ABA Journal interview requests.
Fake, defamatory images of people are among the many complaints about generative artificial intelligence, and celebrities are fighting back by copyrighting their images, sending takedown notices and filing lawsuits.
Some say Black celebrities are targeted specifically. In 2024, NBC News examined 12 YouTube channels and found AI-generated fake news content about notable Black people resulted in millions of views.
In February, Ben Crump held a press conference outlining a letter his law firm sent to the Federal Trade Commission and California Attorney General Rob Bonta claiming that while digital platforms like YouTube and its parent company, Google, represent that they prohibit “misinformation, impersonation, and deceptive conduct,” their enforcement practices are “inconsistent and ineffective.” Crump said his firm represented the interests of Black public figures and the interests of communities harmed by deceptive platform practices. The letter preceded the approval in May of a class action settlement Crump reached with Google over allegations that Black employees experienced systematic racial disparities in hiring, pay and advancement. Google did not respond to ABA Journal interview requests.
To help protect Matthew McConaghey, attorneys at the Los Angeles-based entertainment law firm Yorn Levine secured trademarks from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to shield the actor’s voice and likeness from AI. That included a sound mark of the audio of him saying “Alright alright alright,” a line from the 1993 movie Dazed and Confused.
Taylor Swift, a pop singer who according to Billboard has more digital song sales No. 1s than any other artist in the 21st century, has a trademark portfolio that includes many ownership rights, including to her name, initials and words and phrases such as “Swiftie” and “Taylor’s Version.”
“It will be more difficult for AI to use Taylor Swift because she will be in a better legal position to stop them,” says John S. Kendall, a Chicago patent and trademark attorney.
Jeff Becker is a Swanson, Martin & Bell partner based in Chicago who specializes in intellectual property litigation. His firm has represented Chance the Rapper, Kendrick Lamar and the estates of Aretha Franklin and Walter Payton. Becker says his firm has had success with cease-and-desist letters asking that objectionable materials be taken down.
Under federal law, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act provides that websites will not be treated as the publisher of information provided by other users.
State and federal laws can present challenges because they protect companies that make little to no effort to ensure information posted on their sites is accurate, says Felton T. Newell, a Los Angeles lawyer. He represents Faith Jenkins Lattimore, a former Sidley Austin lawyer and syndicated TV courtroom judge, and her spouse, singer Kenny Lattimore, in a lawsuit that alleges the couple was defamed on YouTube.
The Lattimores say they saw as many as 35 videos over a 30-day period in 2025, mostly speculating on the couple’s alleged marital conflict or impending divorce and Kenny Lattimore’s sexuality. The couple tried to stop the spread of what they described as misinformation by notifying YouTube—with no success.
“The biggest challenge has been the way that the laws protect companies like Google,” says Newell, a shareholder at the Newell Law Group. “Even though they make no effort to ensure the information posted on their site is accurate and take no steps to address it when it’s revealed to them that the information is false.”
The Circuit Court for Montgomery County, Maryland, lawsuit is filed against Willie L. Laney Jr. He operates the YouTube channel Black Celeb News and presented his website “as an independent celebrity-gossip outlet rather than as content authored by an identifiable individual,” the complaint states. The lawsuit also claims the videos were narrated using an artificial intelligence-generated female voice to further mask Laney’s identity.
Laney’s attorney, Krystle I. Myers, notes some important considerations about the case.
“At its core, this case involves the intersection of defamation law, free speech principles, and the evolving role of digital media. As new platforms continue to reshape how information is shared and consumed, courts are being asked to apply established legal standards to communication methods that did not exist when many of those standards were first developed,” says Myers, a Baltimore intellectual property and entertainment lawyer.
In April 2025, Congress passed the Take It Down Act, which amended Section 223 of the Communications Act of 1934, which deals with the transmission of obscene or harassing telecommunications. The new act criminalizes the nonconsensual publishing of intimate images, including deepfakes in certain circumstances. It also creates new requirements for covered media platforms that the FTC will enforce. Platforms had until May 19, 2026, to put a notice-and-removal process in place.
As of this year, about 47 states have enacted laws to curtail deepfakes, election deepfakes or AI voice cloning. In Florida, where Megan Thee Stallion’s defamation trial took place, Gov. Ron DeSantis in June 2025 signed Brooke's Law, which mandates the removal of deepfake material within 48 hours of a victim's request.
“We oppose the Take It Down Act because it does require online services to take down information before there is any type of adjudication or court ruling that something is illegal,” says David Greene, senior counsel at Electronic Frontier Foundation.
He acknowledges that the point of the act is to make content creators think twice about posting certain kinds of content; however, he points out the law only “gives them 48 hours to make some kind of assessment.”
