Would You Listen to a Song if You Knew It Was Made by AI? The ‘I Run’…

For the past few weeks, there’s been a heated debate over a viral dance track called “I Run."

The song was created and released by British dance act and producer Haven and quickly took off across TikTok and Instagram Reels, fueling hundreds of short-form videos where people soundtrack their lives to it. The appeal was instant, as it has a glossy UK-garage- and dance-inspired sound, with soulful vocals that many listeners believed belonged to singer Jorja Smith. Within weeks, “I Run” had the potential for chart breakthrough in both the US and UK.

But the narrative shifted abruptly when Smith confirmed she was not on the song at all. Speculation spread that the vocals were created using generative AI. Smith’s label, Famm, issued takedown notices, arguing that the song violated copyright and misled listeners into believing Smith had performed on the track. The label is now seeking royalties from the song.

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In an Instagram statement, Famm said that when “I Run” went viral, Haven’s team reached out asking for an actual Smith feature, saying they did that "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.”

The song has since been re-recorded, with vocals by a singer known as Kaitlin Aragon. But Famm doesn’t buy that AI isn’t still at play.

“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," they said in the statement.

The label further criticized what they described as Haven’s deliberate reliance public confusion to get the song some attention.

“They could have made the public aware that Jorja’s vocals did not feature on I Run but instead appeared to revel in the confusion that had been created,” the statement read. "A second layer of public confusion arose once doubt had been cast over whether these were, in fact, Jorja Smith vocals – is this an AI track? Are these AI vocals? Again, rather than clear up the confusion immediately, they allowed the storm to brew.”

“This isn’t about Jorja,” Famm said. “It’s bigger than one artist or one song.”

@aanasmiraa AI will be our demise 😫 its Haven not Heaven 🤦🏾‍♀️ #ai #irun #haven #aimusic #jorjasmith ♬ Love Me - JMSN

Online, reactions are divided. One TikTok creator condemned the situation outright.

“This I run situation is going exactly how I said it was gonna go, because AI music is gentrification and colonization... we’re literally seeing, like, the gentrification of an AI black voice in real time. It’s all toxic, it’s all bad," he said.

Others responded as betrayed fans.

TikToker and Jorja Smith fan Aanasmira sounded almost betrayed in her video.

“Tonight, I just found out that one of my favorite songs is an AI song,” she began. ‘I Run,’ by Heaven. We were all told that it was Jorja Smith. I freaking love her. I hate these. I hate AI.”

With AI-generated music capable of captivating millions of music lovers before being exposed, it begs the question: Would you stop streaming a song once you knew it wasn’t sung by a human?

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