Jorja Smith asks for share of proceeds from viral TikTok song ‘AI clone’ | Jorja Smith

Jorja Smith’s record label has called for a share of the proceeds from a viral TikTok song, which it claims used an artificial intelligence clone of the British singer’s voice.

“I Run”, by British dance group Haven, went viral in October and was set to top the charts in the UK and US after reaching No. 11 on Spotify’s US chart and No. 25 on the platform’s global chart.

It was subsequently banned by streaming services following takedown notices issued by the Smiths, and industry bodies, the Recording Industry Association of America and the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, claimed that the song infringed copyright by impersonating Smith – and by misleading listeners into believing that the song was an original, unreleased song by her.

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

The female vocals in the song appear to be uncredited, and in fact belong to the band Harrison Walker, and were processed through Suno’s genAI. “It shouldn’t be a secret that I used AI-assisted processing to just turn my voice into ‘I Run,'” Walker told Billboard. “As a songwriter and producer, I enjoy using new tools and techniques and staying on top of what’s going on.”

Sony Music, Warner Music Group and Universal Music Group have previously filed lawsuits against Suno over allegations that the company coached its model on label business. Suno claimed it did so under fair use laws. Warner has since agreed to a deal with Sono. Sony and Universal remain in litigation.

In a statement posted on Instagram, Smith’s label Famm claimed that once “I Ran” originally went viral, Haven asked Smith to appear on a remix of the song. Pham claimed that they “did this because they needed to legitimize the track as the audience had been led to believe they were listening to Jorja Smith singing.

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

The Guardian has contacted Haven for comment.

I Run has since been re-recorded with new vocals by Kaitlin Aragon, and last week charted at number 37 in the UK. But Pham believes the new end result will still be created using AI models trained on Smith’s catalog.

“Haven and his team have now replaced the AI ​​voice with a real human voice, although we still believe that both versions of the track infringe on Jorja’s rights and unfairly profit from the work of all the songwriters she collaborates with,” Pham wrote in a statement posted on Instagram.

She said that if they succeed in proving that the AI ​​co-created the track and wins a share of the song, they “will seek to allocate a proportional share to each of Jorja’s writers. This allocation will depend on what percentage of Jorja’s catalog they contributed, because ultimately, if the AI ​​helped write I Run, it would have been trained on Jorja’s catalog of songs.”

Pham claimed that the song initially persisted on streaming platforms and social media as a result of the presence of four separate distributors who “aggressively” marketed the song to “circumvent usual takedown procedures.”

Spotify stated that it detected the impersonation, removed the song, and did not pay any royalties. Billboard also said it reserves the right to remove titles known to be involved in active legal disputes regarding copyright infringements.

Femme accused Haven and their label counterparts of relying on “general confusion as a key part of the marketing strategy… They could have made the audience aware that Jorja’s vocals did not appear on I Run but instead seemed to enjoy the confusion created.”

“A second layer of public confusion arose when doubts were raised about whether these songs were in fact Jorja Smith singing – is this an AI composition? Is this an AI singing? Again, rather than clearing up the confusion immediately, they allowed the storm to subside.”

There is further confusion that a young musician who has made music under the name Haven for years has been targeted by commenters who accuse her of being an artificial intelligence as a result of sharing the name with the newer Artificial Intelligence Act. “It’s time for me to get into this AI mess,” she wrote in an Instagram video caption, releasing her own “Human Haven” cover version of I Run. It remains to be seen whether 90s band Cornish Haven will make an impact.

“It’s not about Jorga,” Pham said. “It’s bigger than one artist or one song.”

Pham called for AI-generated music to be “explicitly labeled as such so that audiences can choose whether or not to consume AI material. Creators who are happy to use their protected works to train AI should be credited and compensated accordingly.”

He highlighted the plight of creators as “collateral damage in the race by governments and companies for AI dominance… The IRUN initiative seems to be a clear example of why we all need to step up and push for some guardrails to be put in place before the moment is completely lost.”

In mid-November, three AI-generated songs topped charts around the world. Breaking Rust’s “Walk My Walk” and “Livin’ on Borrowed Time” topped the top 50 viral songs chart in the US on Spotify. Dutch song “We Say No, No, No to an Asylum Seekers” Center, an anti-immigrant anthem by JW “Broken Veteran,” also topped Spotify’s global viral chart. In July, Velvet Sundown went viral, racking up over a million plays on Spotify within weeks, only to be revealed as an entirely AI-driven game.