An American musician was arrested after allegedly making $12 million using generative artificial intelligence (AI) to create tons of of 1000’s of songs and stream them billions of times.
ABC News and Variety reported on the fifth (local time) that Recent York authorities announced that a 52-year-old musician from North Carolina named Mike Smith had been arrested and charged with fraud and conspiracy.
In response to the report, Smith is accused of fraudulently embezzling streaming revenue that musicians and songwriters were entitled to from 2017 to this yr.
In response to the indictment, he created 1000’s of bot accounts on streaming platforms including Spotify, Amazon Music, and Apple Music, and routinely generated billions of AI-generated songs, at one point streaming them as much as 661,440 times a day.
Smith hatched the scheme to bypass the platform’s fraud detection system, which is presupposed to detect possible fraud once a song has been streamed greater than a billion times.
It is a felony, punishable by as much as 60 years in prison. Specifically, the royalties come from the royalty pool that streaming platforms are presupposed to pay to all artists, which implies that it illegally infringes on the earnings of other artists.
Smith said he has been working with CEOs and promoters of AI music corporations to create songs since 2018, though he wouldn’t disclose which company.
It was also reported that in 2018, when a music distributor identified that there was suspicion of fraud, he strongly denied it.
The case was uncovered by the FBI. Christie Curtis, who heads the FBI’s Recent York office, said she was “dedicated to finding those that manipulate cutting-edge technology for illicit gain and to take advantage of the artistic talents of others.”
Reporter Im Dae-jun ydj@aitimes.com
