A North Carolina man, Michael Smith, was sentenced to 18 months in prison for orchestrating a seven-year streaming fraud scheme using 10,000 bots and hundreds of thousands of AI-generated songs across major platforms like Spotify and Apple Music. In April 2023 alone, his fake tracks were streamed 80.9 million times—far surpassing Taylor Swift's 9.3 million. He must forfeit over $8 million and is the first American criminally charged with AI-assisted streaming fraud.
Background
Streaming fraud has become a growing concern for music platforms, with bot-driven artificial streams siphoning royalties from legitimate artists. This case marks the first criminal prosecution in the US specifically involving AI-generated content used for streaming fraud.
- Source
- Ars Technica
- Published
- Oct 8, 2026 at 01:57 AM
- Score
- 6.0 / 10