Michael Smith sentenced to 18 months in $8 million AI music streaming fraud case

Forbes reports Michael Smith was sentenced to 18 months in prison after pleading guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Federal prosecutors said he used as many as 10,000 bot accounts to stream hundreds of thousands of AI-generated songs he owned billions of times between 2017 and 2024, earning about $8 million in royalties. He was also ordered to forfeit $8,091,843.64 and serve two years of supervised release.