Guy arrested for allegedly using AI to make fake fans listen to fake songs on Spotify

The U.S. government arrested a North Carolina man on Wednesday, in what we’re pretty sure is the first instance of legal action against what’s essentially a brand new crime, freshly minted by the 21st century: Allegedly making more than $10 million by using AI to create “instant” music, posting it to streaming services, and then using more than 10,000 fake accounts to generate streams (and streaming income) for it.

This is per The New York Times, reporting on the arrest of 52-year-old Michael Smith, who allegedly spent the last several years filling Spotify and other streamers (including Apple Music and Amazon Music) with AI-generated songs with names like “Zygosporic” and “Atmologic,” all attributed to different artists with fake names, and then using fake accounts created through purchased email addresses to boost their streaming numbers. (At first, he apparently tried using his own music, or licensing other peoples’, but this is pretty clearly a volume game, so in came the ‘bots.) The eventual technique apparently worked so well that, in an email listed in the Times, Smith apparently bragged that he’d made more than $12 million since embarking on the project in earnest back in 2019.

Fascinatingly, plenty of this music appears to still be up on the streamers—who did occasionally flag issues that listeners raised with the AI-generated tracks, which show up on “compilations” with names like Luminous Links Vol. 6, and which, to our ears, fall into several basic categories like “baby’s first electronica bullshit” or “YouTube ad music.” (The albums we found also have art that is very, very obviously AI generated.) Meanwhile, the artist names that Smith supposedly came up with for his fake songs, which he generated with the help of an AI music firm, read like a classic online “Tag yourself” meme: Are you “Iluminada McGill,” composer of “Undercliff?” Patria Toon, creator of “Rectosigmoid”? Or do you groove to the stylings of Broderick Schwendemen, whose “Zymotechnical” is the clear breakout dance hit of Pulse Pinnacle Picks Vol. 3?

Charges against Smith include wire fraud and money laundering conspiracy; he could face up to 20 years in prison if convicted.