Federal authorities hit a North Carolina man with charges arising from allegations that he fraudulently earned streaming royalties through a scheme involving bots and AI-generated songs.
The man, identified by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York as Michael Smith, faces wire fraud conspiracy, wire fraud and money laundering conspiracy counts. His indictment was unsealed this week, according to a news release from the U.S. Attorney's Office.
He "eventually turned to artificial intelligence" to "obtain the necessary number of songs for his scheme to succeed," the attorney’s office alleged. The AI-generated songs, obtained through an AI music company CEO and a music promoter, bore song and artist names that Smith purportedly "randomly generated" to give the false impression they had been made by actual musicians, according to the attorney’s office.
The attorney’s office alleged the royalties that Smith raked in from his "Bot Accounts" streaming "hundreds of thousands" of his AI-generated songs "billions of times" amounted to over $10 million. AI SCAMS ARE PROLIFERATING. A NEW TOOL IS ATTEMPTING TO COMBAT THEM The platforms that he is accused of conducting his scheme on included Amazon Music, Apple Music, Spotify and YouTube Music, according to the attorney’s office.
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