By Edward Helmore
Publication Date: 2026-03-21 15:14:00
A North Carolina man has pleaded guilty to defrauding music streaming platforms and his fellow musicians out of millions of dollars in royalties by flooding the services with thousands of AI-generated songs – and using automated “bots” to artificially inflate the number of listeners to billions.
As part of a deal with federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York, 52-year-old Michael Smith pleaded guilty Friday to conspiracy to commit wire fraud.
The case against the Cornelius, North Carolina, resident is one of the first successful AI-related fraud cases in the music business, which is plagued by fake music that threatens to flood streaming services and deprive legitimate musicians and copyright holders of revenue.
“Michael Smith used artificial intelligence to generate thousands of fake songs and then streamed those fake songs billions of times,” U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton said in a statement.
“Even though the songs and listeners were fake,…
