Man jailed for using 1,000 bots to fraudulently make $8m from his AI music

Michael Smith, from Cornelius, North Carolina, was sentenced to 18 months in prison after using an extensive network of bots to artificially inflate his AI-generated music streams, resulting in over $8 million in fraudulent earnings. The scheme spanned from 2017 to 2024, during which Smith uploaded thousands of songs to platforms like Spotify, Apple Music, and Amazon Music.

Employing over 1,000 bots, Smith managed to generate the illusion of billions of plays for his tracks, earning millions through per-stream payment plans. The US Justice Department (DoJ) estimated that Smith used up to 10,000 bots at a time, with TechSpot reporting that he connected 52 cloud service accounts to 20 bots each, totaling 1,040 AI agents at his disposal.

Smith orchestrated around 661,440 daily plays, with YouTube Music recording 80.9 million plays for his music in the same period. Smith pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and was ordered to forfeit $8,091,843.64. He will also undergo two years of supervised release following his imprisonment.