A North Carolina man pleaded guilty to fraud charges in federal court Thursday after using fake accounts to stream songs made with artificial intelligence to rack up royalties.
Michael Smith, 54, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and faces up to five years in prison. He also must forfeit $8 million as part of the plea deal, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York said.
Since streaming platforms would pick up on large, anomalous streaming of one song, Smith used AI to create hundreds of thousands of tracks, federal prosecutors said.
Smith, who was indicted in 2024, also created thousands of accounts on the streaming platforms, all of which streamed his AI-made songs continuously, to rack up the small royalty payment owed to an artist each time one of their songs is played on a streaming platform.
The songs had odd names including “Zyzomys” and “Zyme Bedewing” and were listed under artist names including “Calvinistic Dust” and “Camel Edible,” according to court documents.
Smith’s fake bot accounts played his AI-created tracks billions of times, netting him more than $8 million in royalty payments, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said. The scheme ran from 2017 to 2024.
Smith, of Cornelius, North Carolina, is due to be sentenced July 29.
