Jorja Smith’s label requests share of royalties from ‘AI-cloned’ TikTok viral song

2025-12-01T18:16:39Z

Jorja Smith’s record label has called for a share of the royalties from a TikTok-viral song that it claims used an AI-cloned version of the British singer’s voice.

The song I Run, by British dance act Haven, went viral in October and was due to chart in the UK and the US after reaching No 11 on the US Spotify chart and No 25 on the platform’s global chart.

It was then banned by streaming services after takedown notices issued by Smith’s label, and industry bodies the Recording Industry Association of America and the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry alleged that the song infringed on copyright by impersonating Smith – and by misleading listeners into believing that the song was an unreleased original by her.

Many of Haven’s social media posts about the song were tagged #jorjasmith. A video appeared to show Offset of Migos playing the song during his set at Boiler Room New York, which led many fans to believe it was an unreleased Smith song – footage that itself turned out to be fake.

The apparently female vocals on the song were uncredited, and in fact belonged to the band’s Harrison Walker, processed through Suno’s genAI. “It shouldn’t be any secret that I used AI-assisted processing to transform solely my voice for I Run,” Walker told Billboard. “As a songwriter and producer I enjoy using new tools, techniques and staying on the cutting edge of what’s happening.”

In a statement posted on Instagram, Smith’s label Famm claimed that once I Ran originally went viral, Haven’s team asked Smith to feature on a remix of the song. Famm alleged that “they did so as they needed to legitimise the track as the public had been led to believe that they were listening to Jorja Smith’s vocals.

“At no point did they mention to us that AI had been used to manipulate the existing vocals but we already had a suspicion that this was the case. We could have cut a cheque in a backroom deal and gotten paid but we ignored the request.”

I Run has since been re-recorded with new vocals by Kaitlin Aragon, and last week charted at No 37 in the UK. But Famm believes the new top line was still made using AI models trained on Smith’s catalogue.

“Haven and his team have now replaced the AI vocal with a real human vocal, although we still believe both versions of the track infringe on Jorja’s rights and unfairly take advantage of the work of all the songwriters with whom she collaborates,” Famm wrote in a statement posted to Instagram.

It said that if it was successful in establishing that AI was involved in the track’s creation and won a share of the song, they would “seek to allocate each of Jorja’s cowriters with a pro-rata share. This allocation would be based on the percentage of Jorja’s catalogue that they have contributed to, as, ultimately, if AI helped to write I Run, it would have been trained on Jorja’s catalogue of songs.”

Famm alleged that the song initially persisted on streaming and social media platforms as a result of it having four separate distributors who “aggressively” marketed the song, “circumventing usual takedown procedures”.

Spotify stated that it detected the impersonation, removed the song and had not paid out any royalties. source
The new version with Kaitlin Aragon lost over 10M streams yesterday: