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Have you ever stumbled onto an extremely popular artist that you’ve never heard of before, just to wonder if you’re so out of touch that a global phenomenon could pass you by? Well, in at least one recent case, there was a ‘musician’ with billions of streams that basically all came from bots—and if that wasn’t enough, the music itself was AI-generated.
The case is discussed in detail in a press release on justice.gov; the skinny is that North Carolina man Michael Smith “generated thousands of fake songs using artificial intelligence and then streamed those fake songs billions of times,” according to U.S. attorney for the southern district of New York, Jay Clayton. “Although the songs and listeners were fake, the millions of dollars Smith stole was real.”
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Smith won’t be sentenced until July, but the crime carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison. He’s also agreed to forfeit more than $8 million of his ill-gotten gains. It’s no secret that AI is already responsible for the RAMpocalypse and other tangible ills, but its potential for bizarre crimes and careless distortions of ethics—like cloning journalists without their consent—is something that we’ll probably be learning about for years to come.
