In late 2025, a strange thing happened to Fave. A version of her song Intentions that she had never recorded, arranged or approved began going viral on TikTok.
An AI collective calling itself Urban Chords had fed her original vocal stems into a model and transformed them into a layered choral arrangement. It was not her voice, exactly, but it was recognisably built from her voice.
She could have sent takedown notices. She could have gone to court. She could have made the case that no one had the right to remake her record without her permission, and she would have been right on the law. Instead, she went into the studio, recorded over the AI arrangement, and released it as an official remix, becoming the first Nigerian artist to formally feature an AI choir on a release. She framed the choice publicly as an act of reclaiming creativity rather than fighting technology and told her fans that Nigerians should be leading innovation, not running from it.
That is one path. It is not the only one. But it is the one the industry should study, because it is the closest thing we have so far to a working template for how an Afrobeats artist can live inside the new reality.
Originally published by NotJustOk.