A man has pleaded guilty after using more than 1,000 bots to inflate streams of AI-generated songs, generating millions in revenue.
According to US authorities, 52-year-old Michael Smith ran the scheme for seven years, using fake artists and automated systems to collect royalties from platforms like Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, and YouTube. Streaming payouts, often around $0.003–$0.005 per play, scaled into large sums through massive volumes.
Smith reportedly operated around 1,040 bots across multiple cloud accounts, producing hundreds of thousands of AI-generated tracks and streaming them billions of times. The operation earned over $8 million.
He pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and faces up to five years in prison, with sentencing scheduled for July 29, 2026.