Man Charged With $10 Million Streaming Music Scam Using AI-Generated Songs
In a case being calling a first, a musician has been charged with fraudulently inflating streams on services such as Spotify and Apple Music to collect huge royalties.
www.forbes.com
North Carolina Musician Charged With Music Streaming Fraud Aided By Artificial Intelligence
Damian Williams, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and Christie M. Curtis, the Acting Assistant Director in Charge of the New York Field Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”), announced the unsealing of a three-count criminal Indictment charging...
Hopefully not a Pepsi! Also makes you realize how much bots are interacting with rubes on social media sites.
First Criminal Case Involving Artificially Inflated Music Streaming
Damian Williams, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and Christie M. Curtis, the Acting Assistant Director in Charge of the New York Field Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”), announced the unsealing of a three-count criminal Indictment charging MICHAEL SMITH in connection with a scheme to create hundreds of thousands of songs with artificial intelligence and use automated programs called “bots” to stream the AI-generated songs billions of times. SMITH fraudulently obtained more than $10 million in royalty payments through his scheme. SMITH was arrested today and will be presented before a U.S. Magistrate Judge in North Carolina.
FBI Acting Assistant Director Christie M. Curtis said: “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. 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.”
As alleged in the Indictment:[1]
Music can be streamed through music streaming platforms such as Amazon Music, Apple Music, Spotify, and YouTube Music (the “Streaming Platforms”). Each time a song is streamed through one of the Streaming Platforms, the songwriter who composed the song, the musician who performed it, and in certain cases other rights holders, are entitled to small royalty payments. Royalty payments are made proportionately to musicians and songwriters, so that streaming fraud diverts funds from musicians and songwriters whose songs were legitimately streamed by real consumers to those who use automation to falsely create the appearance of legitimate streaming.
SMITH created thousands of accounts on the Streaming Platforms (the “Bot Accounts”) that he could use to stream songs. He then used software to cause the Bot Accounts to continuously stream songs that he owned. At a certain point in the charged time period, SMITH estimated that he could use the Bot Accounts to generate approximately 661,440 streams per day, yielding annual royalties of $1,207,128.
