Extract from Isha Marathe’s article “Musician Indicted in New York Over Music Fraud Related to AI-Generated Songs”
In a first-of-its-kind indictment, New York officials arrested a man on Wednesday for generating music using AI technology and then distributing it billions of times across streaming services to collect royalties.
Michael Smith, 52, a musician out of Cornelius, North Carolina was charged in a three-count indictment in the Southern District of New York, including wire fraud conspiracy, wire fraud and money laundering conspiracy—each carrying a 20-year maximum prison sentence.
U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said in a release that Smith created thousands of accounts on various streaming platforms, and then programmed these “bot” accounts to automatically and constantly stream the music he owned the rights to. At one point, Smith noted that these accounts could generate up to 661,440 streams per day, yielding an estimated $1,207,128 in annual royalties.
