Michael Smith pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud in the Southern District of New York following a yearslong investigation. He agreed to forfeit the royalty payments and faces up to five years in prison.
“Michael Smith generated thousands of fake songs using artificial intelligence and then streamed those fake songs billions of times,” U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton said in a statement.
Sentencing is scheduled for July 29.
“To obtain the necessary number of songs for his scheme to succeed, Smith turned to artificial intelligence, which he used to create hundreds of thousands of AI-generated songs for which he could manipulate the streams,” prosecutors said.
Rather than concentrate on a small number of tracks, Smith spread streams across a large catalog. Prosecutors said the approach was intended to avoid detection systems that flag irregular activity. The catalog included both his own recordings and hundreds of thousands of AI-generated tracks, allowing the operation to scale.
“Although the songs and listeners were fake, the millions of dollars Smith stole was real,” Clayton said. “Millions of dollars in royalties that Smith diverted from real, deserving artists and rights holders. Smith’s brazen scheme is over, as he stands convicted of a federal crime for his AI-assisted fraud.”
Attorneys for Smith did not immediately respond to requests for comment by Decrypt.
