US Man Pleads Guilty to Defrauding Music Streamers with Millions
On March 18 (per the source indicating a guilty plea entered prior), Michael Smith of North Carolina pleaded guilty in federal court for orchestrating an eight-year scheme that used artificial intelligence and thousands of bot accounts to inflate play counts on major streaming platforms like Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, Amazon, and others.
Key Points
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1Michael Smith, a 54-year-old from North Carolina, has admitted to defrauding music streaming platforms of over US$8 million.
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2Smith created hundreds or thousands of AI-generated songs and used automated bots to artificially inflate play counts into the billions.
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3This marks the first criminal case in United States courts involving fraud on this scale using artificial intelligence for royalty theft.
Developments
Michael Smith pleaded guilty in the United States for defrauding music streaming platforms by generating millions of fake songs with AI and using bots to stream them billions of times. His scheme resulted in over $8 million ($13.6m) stolen from artists, marking a historic first criminal case involving artificially inflated royalties generated through artificial intelligence.
Prosecutors in New York have convicted North Carolina native Michael Smith for using AI-generated music and automated bot farms fraudulently stream billions times. As a result, he pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges related to wire fraud after diverting over $8 million from real artists' royalties across major streaming platforms like Spotify and Apple Music.
Michael Smith pleaded guilty in New York federal court and forfeited over $8 million after using AI-generated songs and bot accounts to defraud major streaming services of royalties. He was convicted on one charge of wire fraud conspiracy, with sentencing scheduled for July 29th following the discovery that his scheme diverted funds from legitimate artists by falsely simulating billions in streams across platforms like Spotify and Apple Music.