Man Who Used AI Songs and 10,000 Bots to Out-Stream Taylor Swift Jailed for 18 Months Over $8 Million Fraud

Koeltl also ordered two years of supervised release for Smith once he leaves custody, after a guilty plea in March to conspiracy (AI-generated) (Credit: IBTimes UK)

A Manhattan judge jailed Michael Smith for 18 months on Tuesday, 6 October, in what both sides call the first US criminal streaming fraud case. Smith, a 54-year-old musician from Cornelius, North Carolina, ran up to 10,000 bot accounts at once. They streamed songs mostly made with artificial intelligence (AI).

Prosecutors said Smith's accounts played his AI tracks 80.9 million times on YouTube Music family plans in April 2023. Taylor Swift's entire catalogue drew 9.3 million such plays. Family plans offered the cheapest route to running many accounts. The fake plays brought him over $8 million (about £6 million) from royalty pools real artists share.