USUS man gets 18 months for AI songs and bots that siphoned $8 million in streaming royalties

A US man who made hundreds of thousands of AI songs and streamed them billions of times with bots was sentenced to 18 months in prison.

According to the US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York, Michael Smith, 54, of North Carolina, collected more than $8 million in royalties over seven years. He pleaded guilty to wire fraud conspiracy and was ordered to forfeit $8.09 million and serve two years of supervised release.

Prosecutors called it the first criminal case of AI-assisted music streaming fraud. Because royalties are split from a fixed pool by play count, fake streams take money from real artists.