Okay, now Chelsea, I have about 10 different ways the world is screwed that we didn't really know before articles. But screw that. I have a fun one. I like that that's the one you chose. It's a follow-up to our AI saga. This comes from a website called Futurism. I've never heard of it before. It's just too fun to pass up. And it kind of makes sense because it's an AI follow-up. Anyhow, this is written by Nor Al Sabay, September 6th, 2024. Very recent. Article title.
Man arrested for creating fake bands with AI, and then making $10 million by listening to their songs with bots. Wait, does this work for podcasts too? Well, let's find out. Okay, let's... Also, remember, he's been arrested. Why would he be arrested for... let's find out. Let's find out. So many questions already. An alleged scammer has been arrested under suspicion that he used AI to create a wild number of fake bands and fake music to go with them.
And faking untold streams with more bots to earn millions in ill-gotten revenue. In a press release, the Department of Justice announced that investigators have arrested 52-year-old North Carolina man Michael Smith, who has been charged with a purportedly seven-year scheme that involved using his real-life music skills to make more than $10 million in royalties. Indicted on three counts involving money laundering and wire fraud, the Charlotte Airely Man faces a maximum of 20 years per charge.
With bona fide artists struggling to make ends meet via music streaming services, Smith allegedly worked with the help of two unnamed accomplices, a music promoter and the CEO of an AI music firm, to create, as the indictment states, quote, hundreds of thousands of songs that were then fraudulently streamed, end quote. We need to get a ton of songs fast. Smith emailed his alleged cool conspirators in late 2018 to make this work around the anti-fraud policies these guys are all using now.
Around that same time, the CEO of the AI music company, which is also not the name, began allegedly providing the musician with thousands of songs on a weekly basis. Smith, in turn, would then use automation to generate tons of listens for the crappy tunes. Which, I feel that's editorializing, we don't know if all of them are crappy. AI can make some good songs. Yeah. But keep in mind what we're doing musically here, the CEO wrote an email to the defendant that the DOJ released.
This is not music, it is instant music. The songs that the AI CEO provided to Smith originally had file names full of randomized numbers and letters, such as, I'm not going to read that. The DOJ noted in his detailed press release, when uploading them to streaming platforms including Amazon Music, Apple Music, Spotify and YouTube Music, the man would then change the song's name to words like Zygote, Zygotic, and ZymeBadooing, whatever that is.
The artist's naming convention also followed a somewhat similar pattern, with names ranging from the normal sounding Calvin Man, to headscratchers like Calary Event, Combs Scorching, and Clipso Xord, X-O-R-E-D. To manufacture strings for these songs, Smith allegedly used bots that streamed the songs billions of times without any real person listening. In similar schemes, the bots' meaningless streams were ultimately converted into royalty paychecks for the people behind them.
When, reached by the New York Times regarding the extremely well-documented allegations of fraud and streaming platform manipulation, Smith issued a hilariously affronted statement. Quote, this is absolutely wrong and crazy. There's absolutely no fraud going on whatsoever. How can I appeal this? End quote is what Michael Smith said. End quote, end of article. I feel the same way he does at the end of the article. What was wrong with what he did?
Yeah, I honestly don't know what the Department of Justice is doing stepping in. And they even highlight at the beginning of the article that music streaming services are screwing over actual artists. So maybe they should be going after those, but at the same time. Maybe they're confused about their role in this. Yeah, I mean, I've heard some pretty good. I've recommended him before Aaron Brown, who's a fantastic, I guess, a political comedy commentator who uses AI music just profoundly well.
It has its place. It can be great. There's nothing as far as I know copyright infringing or illegal about it. There's nothing copyright infringing or illegal about bots. So I'm just very confused as to what actually happened here. Okay, so we're just feeling confused by the end of this article. One, and how to do this. Number two, why he's in trouble. And who knows? Maybe we turn this whole story into a song, a melodic rock opera about the man whose ill-gotten fortune set him for doom.
I don't know. The AI can fill in at this point. Yeah, exactly. That'll be a nice song here in which hopefully we don't get in trouble over. Yeah, but in the meantime, you guys got 48 hours to make your own song. This is the crazing our greatness, and we'll see you for your Halloween episode on Friday. Bye.