Man jailed for 18 months after making $8m from AI music with 1,000 bots
Michael Smith in the US uploaded hundreds of thousands of AI-generated songs to Spotify, Apple Music and Amazon Music between 2017 and 2024, then used over 1,000 bots to inflate streams and earn about $8 million in royalties. He was sentenced to 18 months in prison and ordered to forfeit more than $8 million. The news coincides with Google's announcement that it has watermarked 240,000 years' wort
