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Man Arrested for Creating Fake Bands With AI, Then Making $10 Million by Listening to Their Songs With Bots (futurism.com)

submitted 2 months ago by ByteOnBikes@slrpnk.net to c/technology@lemmy.world

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The songs that the AI CEO provided to Smith originally had file names full of randomized numbers and letters such as "n_7a2b2d74-1621-4385-895d-b1e4af78d860.mp3," the DOJ noted in its detailed press release.

When uploading them to streaming platforms, including Amazon Music, Apple Music, Spotify, and YouTube Music, the man would then change the songs' names to words like "Zygotes," "Zygotic," and "Zyme Bedewing," whatever that is.

The artist naming convention also followed a somewhat similar pattern, with names ranging from the normal-sounding "Calvin Mann" to head-scratchers like "Calorie Event," "Calms Scorching," and "Calypso Xored."

To manufacture streams for these fake songs, Smith allegedly used bots that stream the songs billions of times without any real person listening. As with similar schemes, the bots' meaningless streams were ultimately converted to royalty paychecks for the people behind them.

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[–] Underwaterbob@lemm.ee 83 points 2 months ago (18 children)

Wow. I'm a hobbyist musician. I have ~12 million listens across various streaming services and have made a whopping $45 in the two years since I finally released ~25 years worth of material. (Which is a lot of why it's my hobby and not a living.)

I can't imagine the numbers this guy had to pull off to make that much.

[–] Bytemeister@lemmy.world 42 points 2 months ago (4 children)

Send me a link and I can get you to ~12 million and 1 listens.

[–] deltapi@lemmy.world 4 points 2 months ago (2 children)

How obvious is it that it's a bot?

[–] Underwaterbob@lemm.ee 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Me? Honestly, I think it would be obvious to any discerning listener what music is actually made by a person, and what music is AI generated, but really, there's so much music out there of wildly varying quality thanks to accessibility of production tools these days, it probably is literally impossible to tell the difference anymore.

[–] can@sh.itjust.works 4 points 2 months ago

I think it would be obvious to any discerning listener what music is actually made by a person

I'm not so sure anymore. Udio's output is more obvious but Suno has gotten scarily good. I'll still always crave the human element though and I make my music for myself.

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