NEW YORK (CelebrityAccess) — The United States Department of Justice has filed criminal charges against a North Carolina man, accusing him of creating hundreds of thousands of songs with A.I. which he then used bots to stream, generating millions in in royalty payments.
A federal indictment filed in the Southern District of New York, charges Michael Smith with wire fraud, wire fraud conspiracy, and money laundering conspiracy. Each of the charges carries a potential sentence of 20 years in prison.
“As alleged, Michael Smith fraudulently streamed songs created with artificial intelligence billions of times in order to steal royalties. Through his brazen fraud scheme, Smith stole millions in royalties that should have been paid to musicians, songwriters, and other rights holders whose songs were legitimately streamed. Today, thanks to the work of the FBI and the career prosecutors of this Office, it’s time for Smith to face the music,” stated U.S. Attorney Damian Williams.
“Michael Smith allegedly produced hundreds of thousands of songs with artificial intelligence and utilized automatic features to repeatedly stream the music to generate unlawful royalties to the tune of $10 million. The defendant’s alleged scheme played upon the integrity of the music industry by a concerted attempt to circumvent the streaming platforms’ policies. The FBI remains dedicated to plucking out those who manipulate advanced technology to receive illicit profits and infringe on the genuine artistic talent of others,” added FBI Acting Assistant Director Christie M. Curtis.
According to the indictment, Smith was alleged to have created thousands of accounts on streaming platforms such as Amazon Music, Apple Music, Spotify, and YouTube Music, using automated systems, otherwise known as bots, to post A.I.-generated music that he owned the copyrights to.
Smith was then alleged to have used a network of bots to stream the songs, generating royalty payments. According to the indictment, Smith estimated that he could use the Bot Accounts to generate approximately 661,440 streams per day, yielding annual royalties of $1,207,128.
To create the music, Smith was alleged to have began working with the Chief Executive Officer of an AI music company and a music promoter to create hundreds of thousands of songs using artificial intelligence to provide grist for his royalty mill.
As part of the alleged scheme, Smith generated thousands of random song names for his A.I.-generated music such as “Zygopteris,” “Zygopteron,” along with a list of fictitious artists such as “Calliope Bloom,” “Calm Weary,” and “Camel Edible.”
Additionally, the DOJ alleged that Smith made numerous misrepresentations to streaming platforms, providing false names and other information while creating accounts and further deceived those platforms by causing them to falsely report billions of streams of his music, appearing as real users while actually bots.
Federal prosectors alleged that Smith knew he was engaged in fraud and cited an email he sent to two alleged co-conspirators at the end of December 2018, stating “We need to get a TON of songs fast to make this work around the anti-fraud policies these guys are all using now.”
The case is being prosecuted by the Office’s Complex Frauds and Cybercrime Unit. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Nicholas W. Chiuchiolo and Kevin Mead are in charge of the prosecution.
It is unclear of Mr. Smith has obtained legal council and he was not able to be reached for comment.
