A.I. Music Fraudster Who Drew Millions in Royalties Is Sentenced to 18 Months
Prosecutors say Michael Smith flooded music-streaming platforms with bots that repeatedly streamed his A.I.-generated music, earning him as much as $8 million.
TL;DR
- Michael Smith, 54, of Cornelius, N.C., sentenced to 18 months in prison and two years of supervised release.
- Ordered to forfeit more than $8 million in royalties for defrauding music platforms and artists.
- Case is the Justice Department's first involving fraud through AI-assisted music streaming.
- Smith used AI to create music and bot accounts to stream it billions of times, earning millions in royalties.
- His AI-generated artists and songs appeared on platforms like Amazon Music, Apple Music, and Spotify.
- In one instance, his bots streamed music over 80 million times in a month, compared to Taylor Swift's catalog receiving 9.3 million streams.