North Carolina Man Gets 18 Months in First US Federal AI Music Streaming Fraud Sentence

The DOJ sentenced North Carolina resident Michael Smith to 18 months in prison on October 6 in the first US federal AI-assisted music streaming fraud case. From 2017 to 2024 Smith ran thousands of bot accounts that streamed hundreds of thousands of AI-generated songs on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music and YouTube Music, collecting over $8M in royalties. Smith was also ordered to pay $8,091,843.64 in restitution and serve two years of supervised release.