AI-rewritten: This is a summary of an article from Tom’s Hardware, rewritten by AI (Qwen, running locally) to make it easier to read. The facts come from the original article – read it for the full story.

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An American citizen named Michael Smith has been sentenced for leading a criminal operation that used artificial intelligence to commit music streaming fraud. The case, investigated by the FBI, concluded with Smith receiving an 18-month prison sentence and an $8 million fine. According to U.S. Attorney Jamie McDonald, Smith’s team flooded platforms like Spotify and YouTube Music with automated bots to stream fake songs generated by AI. This activity robbed genuine artists of royalty payments that millions deserved.

Smith operated between 2017 and 2024 by creating thousands of fake accounts on major music services. His operation utilized up to 10,000 bots to continuously stream his own content. To make the fraud appear legitimate, he produced hundreds of thousands of AI-generated songs. The court report states that during this period, his tracks were streamed billions of times. Prosecutors claim Smith successfully netted more than $8 million in fraudulent royalty payments through these activities.

The scale of the fraud was highlighted by a comparison to Taylor Swift’s music catalog. In April 2023, Smith’s bot accounts generated 80.9 million streams using family plan accounts. This number is nearly nine times higher than the 9.3 million streams his real catalog received from the same source that month. The U.S. Attorney’s Office noted that Smith used super intelligence to rob fans and artists of their rightful earnings. Smith faces an additional two years of supervised release and must pay a specific forfeiture amount of $8,091,843.64.