As the year is 2024, fraud and robbery cases are no longer committed in the classical ways: In the United States, a man robbed companies that host many platforms such as Spotify, Apple Music and Amazon Music with an unthinkable idea. Here are the details…
He tricked Spotify and others with AI
A North Carolina musician was charged by federal prosecutors on Wednesday for allegedly using artificial intelligence (AI) to defraud music platforms. Michael Smith, 52, created hundreds of thousands of fake songs using AI to generate songs by non-existent bands and had bots play those songs, collecting royalties from platforms such as Spotify, Apple Music and Amazon Music.
The charges, announced by U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Damian Williams, include conspiracy to commit fraud and money laundering. If convicted, Smith could face up to 20 years in prison on each count.
Smith allegedly continued this scheme for seven years, during which time he created thousands of fake accounts using purchased email addresses, through which he played his AI-generated songs repeatedly from different computers, impersonating individual listeners from various locations.
In a music industry that bases its success on digital streaming numbers, Smith’s fake catalog has racked up billions of streams. To hide the scam, he spread his work across a wide spectrum by not playing each song very often, and he used AI-generated artist names and song titles with interesting names to avoid drawing attention.
Artist names include Callous Post and Calorie Screams, while song titles include “Zygotic Washstands” and “Zymotechnical.” Smith allegedly embezzled $10 million through this method.
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