Man makes $8m using bots to stream his AI-generated music billions of times, sentenced to 18 months in prison

A North Carolina man who used thousands of bot accounts to stream his own AI-generated songs billions of times has been sentenced to 18 months in prison for collecting more than $8 million in royalties he was not entitled to.

Michael Smith, 54, of Cornelius, North Carolina, was sentenced on Tuesday, 6 October, by Judge John G. Koeltl. He was also given two years of supervised release and ordered to forfeit $8,091,843.64. Prosecutors said it was the first criminal case involving AI-music streaming fraud.

Michael Smith

According to prosecutors, the scheme ran from 2017 to 2024, with as many as 10,000 bot accounts streaming AI-generated music that Smith owned on Amazon Music, Apple Music, Spotify and YouTube Music. 

He reportedly used hundreds of thousands of AI-made songs, along with fake email addresses and fraudulently obtained debit cards to set up the accounts. The platforms pay royalties per stream, which is how the plays turned into money.

To avoid raising alarms, the bots reportedly spread their plays thinly across a huge catalogue instead of piling them onto a few tracks. Smith wrote in an email that he needed "a TON of songs fast."

Smith pleaded guilty on 16 March. He was convicted on one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Reports say he faced up to five years.

Prosecutors had urged a sentence of at least 46 months, while Smith asked for probation, arguing that the losses were spread so widely that no individual artist suffered meaningful financial harm. The US Probation Office had recommended 24 months.

Prosecutors argued the fake streams diluted the value of every legitimate stream counted in the same period. The case did not treat creating or releasing AI-generated music as a crime. It centred on using bots to fake listeners.

The reports seen did not say when Smith must begin serving the sentence.