The bands and the fans were fake. The US$10mil was real.


Smith, 52, was accused in a federal indictment unsealed Sept 4 of stealing royalty payments from digital streaming platforms for seven years. Smith, a flesh-and-blood musician, produced AI-generated music and played it billions of times using bots he had programmed, according to the indictment. — Unsplash

A North Carolina man used artificial intelligence to create hundreds of thousands of fake songs by fake bands, then put them on streaming services where they were enjoyed by an audience of fake listeners, prosecutors said.

Penny by penny, he collected a very real US$10mil (RM43.22mil), they said when they charged him with fraud.

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