A 54-year-old man from North Carolina has been sentenced to prison after using artificial intelligence (AI) to produce hundreds of thousands of songs and automated accounts to make them appear extraordinarily popular on music-streaming platforms.
Michael Smith’s operation ran from 2017 to 2024, generating billions of artificial streams and more than $8 million in royalties from services including Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music and YouTube Music.
On October 6, 2026, a federal judge sentenced Smith to 18 months in prison, followed by two years of supervised release. He was also ordered to forfeit $8,091,843.64, according to the United States Department of Justice.
The case has drawn attention to the risks artificial intelligence and automated software pose to the digital music industry, particularly when technology is used to manipulate systems designed to compensate artists for genuine listening activity.
How the Scheme Worked
According to federal prosecutors, Smith began creating a large catalogue of AI-generated music and uploading it to streaming services under numerous artist identities.
The songs included unusual titles such as “Calorie Screams,” “Calm Knuckles” and “Zygotes.” Rather than building a genuine audience through promotion or live performances, Smith used automated programs known as bots to play the tracks repeatedly.
Prosecutors said he created thousands of fraudulent accounts and used software to stream his music billions of times. The operation relied on spreading activity across a vast catalogue of songs so that no single track would necessarily attract immediate attention from fraud-detection systems.
The strategy exploited a fundamental feature of music streaming: platforms use listening data to help determine how royalties are distributed among rights holders.
By making artificial activity look like genuine listening, Smith was able to collect payments he was not entitled to receive.
His AI Songs Outstreamed Taylor Swift
One of the most striking examples in the case came from April 2023.
According to the Department of Justice, Smith’s fraudulent accounts generated 80.9 million streams of his AI-generated music through YouTube Music family plans during that month.
By comparison, Taylor Swift’s entire catalogue received 9.3 million streams through those same types of family-plan streams.
The figures illustrate the scale of the manipulation. They do not mean that Smith had built a genuine audience larger than Swift’s; prosecutors said the plays were artificially generated by accounts under his control.
The case demonstrates how inflated streaming figures can create a misleading picture of an artist’s popularity while allowing the person behind the manipulation to collect royalties.
Why Did He Need Hundreds of Thousands of Songs?
The large catalogue was central to the operation.
According to prosecutors, Smith used AI to generate hundreds of thousands of songs because he needed enough material to distribute the automated plays across many tracks.
The catalogue also made it easier to spread activity across different accounts and streaming services rather than concentrating millions of plays on just a few songs.
In this case, AI was not itself the crime. The criminal conduct involved allegedly deceptive account creation, artificial streaming and the collection of royalties through fraudulent activity.
The distinction is important as musicians, producers and technology companies increasingly experiment with AI-assisted music production.
How Much Money Did He Make?
The Department of Justice said Smith fraudulently obtained more than $8 million in royalty payments from major streaming platforms.
His sentence included an order to forfeit $8,091,843.64, in addition to 18 months in prison and two years of supervised release.
Smith pleaded guilty in March 2026 to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. The October sentence followed that guilty plea.
Federal prosecutors argued that the scheme harmed genuine musicians and songwriters because royalty funds were diverted to fraudulent streams rather than being distributed according to legitimate listening activity.
What Does the Case Mean for Real Musicians?
For musicians, especially independent artists who depend on streaming income, the case raises questions about the fairness and reliability of digital royalty systems.
Streaming royalties are generally distributed according to platform-specific formulas, with revenue allocated among eligible rights holders based on factors such as qualifying streams and contractual arrangements.
When fake plays enter those systems, they can distort reported listening activity and redirect money away from legitimate creators.
The case also presents a challenge for streaming companies. They must identify fraudulent accounts and artificial listening patterns without unfairly penalising real users or musicians whose work attracts unusual but genuine audiences.
AI tools can make it easier to produce music at enormous scale, while automated software can generate listening activity without human interest. That combination creates new challenges for services attempting to distinguish real audiences from manufactured engagement.
Is AI-Generated Music Illegal?
No. Producing music with AI is not, by itself, illegal in the United States.
AI tools can be used in legitimate ways to assist with composition, sound design, production and experimentation. Artists may also distribute AI-assisted music through streaming services, subject to each platform’s rules and applicable law.
Smith’s case concerned the alleged manipulation of streaming systems and the fraudulent collection of royalties, not simply the use of AI to create songs.
That distinction matters for creators who use the technology lawfully. The legal issue is the deceptive conduct used to manufacture streams and obtain payments, rather than the mere existence of AI-generated music.
A Warning for the Digital Economy
Smith’s conviction and sentence represent a major federal criminal case involving AI-assisted music-streaming fraud. The Department of Justice described it as its first criminal prosecution of this type.
The case highlights a broader challenge facing online platforms: technology that can automate legitimate creative work can also be used to manufacture fake engagement at a scale that would be difficult to achieve manually.
As AI-generated content becomes more common, streaming services, advertisers and other digital businesses will face growing pressure to verify that the activity used to calculate payments reflects genuine users and legitimate transactions.
For Smith, the consequences include prison time and the forfeiture of millions of dollars. For the music industry, the case serves as a warning that billions of reported plays do not necessarily represent billions of real listeners.
The central lesson is simple: AI can help create music, but using bots and fraudulent accounts to manipulate the market can turn a technological experiment into a criminal enterprise.
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