10/14/2026
One month, his songs racked up 80.9 million streams on YouTube Music family plans. The listeners weren’t fans. They were bots he controlled.
Federal prosecutors say Michael Smith created hundreds of thousands of AI-generated songs, then used as many as 10,000 bot accounts at once to play them on repeat. He spread the fake streams across so many tracks that no single song would draw too much attention. From 2017 to 2024, the scheme brought in more than $8 million in royalties—money drawn from the same pools that pay real musicians and songwriters.
Smith pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud. He has now been sentenced to 18 months in prison, followed by two years of supervised release, and ordered to forfeit more than $8 million.
