American sentenced to prison for cheating on listening to AI music
On October 6, a federal court for the Southern District of New York sentenced a resident of Cornelius (North Carolina) Michael Smith to a year and a half in prison for cheating on tracks created using artificial intelligence (AI). This was reported by the US Department of Justice.
On October 6, a federal court for the Southern District of New York sentenced a resident of Cornelius (North Carolina) Michael Smith to a year and a half in prison for cheating on tracks created using artificial intelligence (AI). This was reported by the US Department of Justice. As Forbes notes, this was the first criminal case related to fraud when using AI to cheat and create music on streaming.
In March of this year, Michael Smith pleaded guilty in this case - he uploaded music created by AI to streaming services and wound up listening to it using bots. Between 2017 and 2024, he created thousands of songs using neural networks and uploaded them to streaming services, including Amazon Music, Apple Music, Spotify, YouTube Music. The Ministry of Justice reported that the defrauded streaming services paid him about $8 million for these allegedly scored a total of billions of views.
Jana Christmas
