According to CoinMeta, a resident of North Carolina was sentenced to 18 months in prison for using artificial intelligence to generate fake songs and automating billions of plays on major platforms. Michael Smith (54) was also sentenced to two years of supervised release and ordered to pay a fine of $8,091,843.64. The scheme, which lasted from 2017 to 2024, involved thousands of robot accounts on services such as Spotify and YouTube Music. Smith created hundreds of thousands of tracks generated by artificial intelligence and used these tracks for automated playback to collect royalties while avoiding detection. At times, Smith's robot accounts operated up to 10,000 accounts simultaneously, using forged emails and debit cards. Jamie McDonnell, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District, stated that Smith used artificial intelligence technology to commit fraud, overwhelming music streaming platforms and depriving real artists and their fans of their rightful royalty payments. The prosecution described this as the first criminal case involving fraud facilitated by artificial intelligence in the streaming industry.