A North Carolina 'musician', who used artificial intelligence (AI) tools and thousands of fake accounts to fraudulently stream songs billions of times, has been accused of wire fraud aimed at claiming millions in royalties.
The musician, Michael Smith, now faces charges of wire fraud conspiracy and money laundering conspiracy. Prosecutors say this is the first criminal case of its kind they have handled, reported BBC.com.
The report quoted US Attorney Damian Williams saying; "Smith’s fraud scheme stole millions in royalties that should have gone to musicians, songwriters, and other rights holders of legitimately streamed songs."
According to the BBC report, the indictment reveals that the 52-year-old used hundreds of thousands of AI-generated songs to manipulate streaming numbers. These tracks were streamed billions of times across various platforms using automated bot accounts to avoid detection.
Authorities claim Smith collected over $10 million in royalties through this scheme, which lasted several years, the report added.
While this case has attracted the attention of sleuths, there may be many more that remain hidden.
AI models can generate new pieces of music that mimic the style of existing compositions. For example, an AI trained on a dataset of classical music can create new pieces that sound like they were composed by Beethoven or Mozart.
The AI tools can also help apply the style of one piece of music to another. This means you could take a modern song and reimagine it in the style of a specific genre or artist, effectively "duplicating" the original in a new context, apart from assisting in remixes by analysing the original track and generating variations.