Musician Jailed for Bot-Farming Billions of AI-Generated Streams
US man given prison sentence for bot-farming music streams
Michael Smith, a 54-year-old musician from North Carolina, was sentenced to 18 months in prison for wire fraud after creating up to 10,000 fake accounts to stream his AI-generated songs billions of times, earning $8 million in royalties. He forfeits the money. The Justice Department compared his 80.9 million monthly streams to Taylor Swift's 9.3 million on YouTube Music.
Michael Smith exploited super intelligence technology to generate a fraud. By flooding music streaming platforms with automated bots in the place of consumers, and fake songs in the place of creativity, Smith robbed millions in royalty payments from genuine artists and their fans.
- dclavijo
Here’s what bothers me: isn’t the United States a free market? What crime did he actually commit? Using services exactly as they are offered? It turns out that now, if you take advantage of the system as it was designed and gain a financial edge, you become a criminal—but if a major corporation does it, they just get a slap on the wrist.
- linuxhansl
> “Michael Smith exploited super intelligence technology to generate a fraud,” said US Attorney Jamie McDonald.
Super intelligence. Aha. :)
- cm2187
I am not sure I understand. Surely a AI generated song isn't a "fake song"? Is it a crime to publish an AI generated song?
It seems that what he is guilty of is to generate some fake users pretending to listen to his songs, is that right? I can see how it is fraud, but how is it different from all the dark patterns used by newspapers to generate more page prints (like auto-refreshing pages)?
- sowhat1
When has any Facebook executive ever gotten a prison sentence for their horrendous doings? They just pirated all of Anna's Archive to feed into their AI.
Our legal system has been turned into a tool to punish the poor and enrich the wealthy.
- Waterluvian
Oh lord. “Super Intelligence”
So the agencies are forced to pretend every ridiculous thing their king says is a great idea.
- drivebyhooting
> By flooding music streaming platforms with automated bots in the place of consumers, and fake songs in the place of creativity, Smith robbed millions in royalty payments from genuine artists and their fans. This Office is committed to ensuring the integrity of all markets, and protecting the public from those who use super intelligence for fraud.
He certainly didn’t defraud artists or their fans. This is false framing. He defrauded the streaming platform, which I’m sure the jury would be far less empathetic towards.
- iugtmkbdfil834
Interesting. The site uses term super intelligence, BUT is used to spread negative portrayal of AI tech.
- likeclockwork
If Spotify royalties were allocated fairly a scheme like this shouldn't be able to pull more money out than the subscriptions put in.