FBI busts musician’s elaborate AI-powered $10M streaming-royalty heist
FBI busts musician’s elaborate AI-powered $10M streaming-royalty heist
Feds say it's the first US criminal case involving artificially inflated music streaming.
The crime isn't in publishing AI music. The crime was that he setup fake listeners streaming his songs so he could get royalties and inflate popularity. Initially he published his own songs, but to scale up and avoid detection he started creating music at scale - That's where AI Comes in.
Smith's scheme, which prosecutors say ran for seven years, involved creating thousands of fake streaming accounts using purchased email addresses. He developed software to play his AI-generated music on repeat from various computers, mimicking individual listeners from different locations. In an industry where success is measured by digital listens, Smith's fabricated catalog reportedly managed to rack up billions of streams.
This is basically the same way you get on the NYT bestseller list - buy your own books.
Isn't this basically how Taylor Swift got her start .... her millionaire father just buying thousands of her debut album at the beginning.
I don’t see the crime. Man games system. Man makes money. No crime.
That's a very... capitalist way of thinking.
Is it? Taking money from big corporations, using their own machine? Sounds like you don’t know much about capitalism.
the only good form of capitalism is the type that confuses idiots
yes, calling it a heist specifically is extremely colourful in the wrong way
It does help set a good precedent. When companies try to do the same thing, further hurting smaller artists, we can point to this case