{"id":198033,"date":"2026-03-21T11:18:00","date_gmt":"2026-03-21T15:18:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/21\/us-man-pleads-guilty-to-defrauding-music-streamers-out-of-millions-using-ai-us-crime\/"},"modified":"2026-03-21T13:40:14","modified_gmt":"2026-03-21T17:40:14","slug":"us-man-pleads-guilty-to-defrauding-music-streamers-out-of-millions-using-ai-us-crime","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/21\/us-man-pleads-guilty-to-defrauding-music-streamers-out-of-millions-using-ai-us-crime\/","title":{"rendered":"US man pleads guilty to defrauding music streamers out of millions using AI | US crime"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/2026\/mar\/21\/man-pleads-guilty-music-streaming-fraud-ai\">US man pleads guilty to defrauding music streamers out of millions using AI | US crime<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/2026\/mar\/21\/man-pleads-guilty-music-streaming-fraud-ai\">https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/2026\/mar\/21\/man-pleads-guilty-music-streaming-fraud-ai<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Publish Date: <a href=\"publish_date]\">2026-03-21 11:18:00<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Source Domain: <a href=\"www.theguardian.com\">www.theguardian.com<\/a><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<p>A North Carolina man, Michael Smith, pleaded guilty to defrauding music streaming platforms and musicians out of millions in royalties by using AI-generated songs and automated &#8220;bots&#8221; to artificially boost stream counts.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>Smith&#8217;s fraudulent scheme involved generating thousands of fake songs using artificial intelligence and streaming these fake songs billions of times to fraudulently obtain over $10 million in royalty payments.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>This case marks one of the first successful prosecutions of AI-related fraud in the music industry, highlighting a growing concern over fake music that threatens streaming services and deprives genuine musicians of their earnings.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>As part of a plea deal, Smith faces up to five years in prison and could forfeit more than $8 million when he is sentenced in July.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>The case underscores the growing issue of AI-generated music, which is diverting funds from musicians and songwriters whose songs were legitimately streamed by real consumers, posing a new threat to the industry that has been grappling with music piracy.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>US man pleads guilty to defrauding music streamers out of millions using AI | US&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":198034,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/i.guim.co.uk\/img\/media\/f57907984e93a06b80362ec81b45637086661390\/1160_0_5800_4640\/master\/5800.jpg?width=1200&height=630&quality=85&auto=format&fit=crop&precrop=40:21,offset-x50,offset-y0&overlay-align=bottom%2Cleft&overlay-width=100p&overlay-base64=L2ltZy9zdGF0aWMvb3ZlcmxheXMvdGctZGVmYXVsdC5wbmc&enable=upscale&s=b7208f282e97e9ad56e43bd8c50428c1","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[20],"class_list":["post-198033","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificial-intelligence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198033"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=198033"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198033\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":198035,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198033\/revisions\/198035"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/198034"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=198033"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=198033"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=198033"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}