Michael Smith's guilty plea

Michael Smith, 54, has admitted to conspiring to commit electronic fraud by using artificial intelligence to generate thousands of songs and playing them for bots to artificially inflate streaming numbers and collect millions of dollars.

AI-generated music scheme

Between 2017 and 2024, Smith, a resident of North Carolina, created and distributed tracks designed to be streamed rather than listened to, flooding platforms like Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, and YouTube Music with content meant to boost streaming metrics.

Strategy to avoid detection

Smith's method involved spreading the artificial streams across hundreds of thousands of tracks rather than concentrating them on a few titles, aiming to avoid raising suspicion among platform moderators and users.

Comparison to real streaming activity

According to the U.S. Department of Justice, in April 2023, Taylor Swift's songs on YouTube Music received 9.3 million plays from family subscriptions, while Smith's tracks recorded 80.9 million plays during the same period, highlighting the scale of his fraud.

Sentence and financial consequences

Smith managed to collect over 14 million dollars before being sentenced to 18 months in prison, two years of supervised release, and the seizure of more than 8 million dollars as part of his legal resolution.