US man given prison sentence for bot-farming music streams

A North Carolina musician, 54-year-old Michael Smith, has been sentenced to 18 months in federal prison after pleading guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud for running a large-scale scheme that generated millions in streaming royalties. Prosecutors say Smith created as many as 10,000 fraudulent accounts between 2017 and his 2024 arrest and uploaded hundreds of thousands of AI-generated tracks that his bots streamed billions of times. He pleaded guilty in March and was ordered to forfeit roughly $8 million in ill-gotten royalty payments.

To evade detection, Smith dispersed automated plays across thousands of songs rather than concentrating on a single track; investigators say his bot family-plan streams reached 80.9 million plays in April 2023 alone, compared with 9.3 million family-plan streams for one major artist’s entire catalogue that month on the same service. The Justice Department characterized the operation as an abuse of “super intelligence” to replace genuine listeners and creators with automated activity, with the US Attorney calling the fraud a theft of royalties from legitimate artists and fans. The sentence and forfeiture underscore stepped-up enforcement against AI-driven manipulation of streaming platforms.