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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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[–] Etterra@lemmy.world 8 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Honestly I don't think this should be a crime.

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[–] Nommer@sh.itjust.works 8 points 2 months ago

Unfortunate that he got caught. He was simply playing the same game the corps do but since he isn't mega rich he gets punished.

[–] Mediocre_Bard@lemmy.world 7 points 2 months ago

If he had been using the streams to train new AI bands, then that's just using resources to develop a product.

[–] Kyrgizion@lemmy.world 6 points 2 months ago (1 children)

110K/mo was bound to attract attention. So, purely hypothetically, uhh, what would the lowest cutoff be before eyebrows start raising?

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[–] Camzing@lemmy.world 4 points 2 months ago (3 children)

So it's OK if you are a real artist?

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