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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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[–] jordanlund@lemmy.world 140 points 2 months ago (24 children)

Not sure how this is a crime... breach of TOS, sure, but a crime?

What law is being broken here?

If his fake bands are being paid for bot clicks, that's a problem for the platforms to figure out. They need to examine their TOS.

[–] sunbeam60@lemmy.one 22 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (3 children)

It’s fraud by false representation the U.K. Fraud is basically whenever you misuse a system for undue profit. The terms are very broad. “You know it when you see it” kind of thing.

[–] shani66@ani.social 3 points 2 months ago (2 children)

So, in the u.k., it's just one of those "we keep this handy to hurt the uppity poors" laws?

[–] sunbeam60@lemmy.one 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Probably the opposite actually. Almost all white collar crime falls in under fraud. The crimes of the desperate, the poor or the wicked usually fall into a few, clear categories around harming others physically.

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