Man Used Bots To Stream AI Songs, Making Over $10 Million

A North Carolina man has been indicted in New York on charges of using artificial intelligence to create hundreds of thousands of songs, then using bots to stream them billions of times to fraudulently earn more than $10 million in royalty payments.

Michael Smith, 52, is charged with wire fraud conspiracy, wire fraud, and money laundering conspiracy. Each count carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in federal prison.

"As alleged, Michael Smith fraudulently streamed songs created with artificial intelligence billions of times in order to steal royalties. Through his brazen fraud scheme, Smith stole millions in royalties that should have been paid to musicians, songwriters, and other rights holders whose songs were legitimately streamed. Today, thanks to the work of the FBI and the career prosecutors of this Office, it’s time for Smith to face the music," U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said in a statement.

According to the indictment, on or about Dec. 26, 2018, Smith sent an email to two co-conspirators, stating, "We need to get a TON of songs fast to make this work around the anti-fraud policies these guys are all using now.”

Because streaming services such as Amazon Music, Apple Music, Spotify, and YouTube Music would notice a billion fraudulent streams on a single song, the plan was to create many songs that would get a smaller number of fraudulent streams each.

Smith allegedly created thousands of bot accounts on the streaming platforms, which would continuously stream songs he owns. At one point, Smith estimated the bot accounts could generate approximately 661,440 streams per day, spread over thousands of songs, yielding annual royalties of $1,207,128.

To increase the number of songs the bots could stream, Smith in 2018 began working with the CEO of an AI music company, identified in court documents as CC-3, and a music promoter, identified as CC-4, to create hundreds of thousands of songs using artificial intelligence.

CC-3 provided hundreds of thousands of AI-produced songs, and Smith created randomly generated song names such as “Zygophyceae,” “Zygophyllaceae,” “Zygophyllum,” “Zygopteraceae,” and more. Randomly generated artist names included “Calliope Erratum,” “Callousness,” “Calm Baseball,” “Calm Force,” “Calm The Super,” “Calorie Event,” “Calorie Screams,” “Calvin Mann,” “Calvinistic Dust,” “Calypso Xored,” and “Camel Edible.”

In total, Smith allegedly had bots stream hundreds of thousands of AI-generated songs billions of times, generating more than $10 million in royalties.

“Michael Smith allegedly produced hundreds of thousands of songs with artificial intelligence and utilized automatic features to repeatedly stream the music to generate unlawful royalties to the tune of $10 million," FBI Acting Assistant Director Christie M. Curtis said. "The defendant’s alleged scheme played upon the integrity of the music industry by a concerted attempt to circumvent the streaming platforms’ policies. The FBI remains dedicated to plucking out those who manipulate advanced technology to receive illicit profits and infringe on the genuine artistic talent of others.”

Story via TMX