Man Detained for Using AI to Create Fake Bands

and Earning $10 Million by Using Bots to Listen to Their Songs

 

 

 

He appears to be in the hands of the feds.

A suspected scammer was detained on suspicion of using artificial intelligence (AI) to fabricate a large number of fictitious bands and their associated songs, as well as hundreds of phony streams using additional bots in order to defraud investors out of millions of dollars.

The Department of Justice said in a news release that 52-year-old Michael Smith of North Carolina had been taken into custody by investigators. Smith is accused of a seven-year plan in which he used his actual musical abilities to earn over $10 million in royalties.

Indicted on three counts involving money laundering and wire fraud, the Charlotte-area man faces a maximum of 20 years per charge.

With bona fide artists struggling to make ends meet via music streaming services, Smith allegedly worked with the help of two unnamed accomplices  a music promoter and the CEO of an AI music firm  to create “hundreds of thousands of songs” that he then “fraudulently stream[ed,” the indictment explains.

“We need to get a TON of songs fast,” Smith emailed his alleged co-conspirators in late 2018, “to make this work around the anti-fraud policies these guys are all using now.”

Around that same time, the CEO of the AI music company, which also has not been named, began allegedly providing the musician with “thousands of songs” on a weekly basis. Smith in turn would then use automation to generate tons of listens for the crappy tunes.

“Keep in mind what we’re doing musically here,” the CEO wrote in an email to the defendant that the DOJ released, “this is not ‘music,’ it’s ‘instant music’ ;).”

The DOJ pointed out in its comprehensive news release that the music the AI CEO initially gave Smith had file names comprised of arbitrary numbers and letters, including “n_7a2b2d74-1621-4385-895d-b1e4af78d860.mp3.”

The man would then rename the songs to words like “Zygotes,” “Zygotic,” and “Zyme Bedewing,” whatever that is, after uploading them to streaming services including Amazon Music, Apple Music, Spotify, and YouTube Music.

The artist naming convention also followed a somewhat similar pattern, with names ranging from the normal-sounding “Calvin Mann” to head-scratchers like “Calorie Event,” “Calms Scorching,” and “Calypso Xored.”

To manufacture streams for these fake songs, Smith allegedly used bots that stream the songs billions of times without any real person listening. As with similar schemes, the bots’ meaningless streams were ultimately converted to royalty paychecks for the people behind them.

When reached by the New York Times regarding the extremely well-documented allegations of fraud and streaming platform manipulation, Smith issued a hilariously affronted statement.

“This is absolutely wrong and crazy!,” the NC man rebutted. “There is absolutely no fraud going on whatsoever! How can I appeal this?”