Man pleads guilty to generating songs with AI then having bots stream them 'billions of times' to make over $8 million in royalties

"Although the songs and listeners were fake, the millions of dollars Smith stole was real."
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Have you ever stumbled onto an extremely popular artist that you've never heard of before, just to wonder if you're so out of touch that a global phenomenon could pass you by?

Well, in at least one recent case, there was a 'musician' with billions of streams that basically all came from bots—and if that wasn't enough, the music itself was AI-generated.

Last Thursday, Clayton announced Smith's guilty plea to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud.

The scale of Smith's operation is hard to fathom: "hundreds of thousands of AI-generated songs were streamed by his bot accounts billions of times, which allowed him to fraudulently obtain more than $8 million in royalties," said the attorney's office in a press release.

Turns out, all those itty-bitty royalty payments add up if you just throw enough bots at the wall.

Smith won't be sentenced until July, but the crime carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison.

He's also agreed to forfeit more than $8 million of his ill-gotten gains.

It's no secret that AI is already responsible for the RAMpocalypse and other tangible ills, but its potential for bizarre crimes and careless distortions of ethics— like cloning journalists without their consent —is something that we'll probably be learning about for years to come.

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Justin first became enamored with PC gaming when World of Warcraft and Neverwinter Nights 2 rewired his brain as a wide-eyed kid.

As time has passed, he's amassed a hefty backlog of retro shooters, CRPGs, and janky '90s esoterica.

Whether he's extolling the virtues of Shenmue or troubleshooting some fiddly old MMO, it's hard to get his mind off games with more ambition than scruples.

When he's not at his keyboard, he's probably birdwatching or daydreaming about a glorious comeback for real-time with pause combat.

Any day now...

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