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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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[–] shani66@ani.social 59 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (14 children)

Lawsuit, sure, but is it actually illegal?

[–] FahrenheitGhost@lemmy.world 56 points 2 months ago (2 children)

People who are not part of the wealthy elite stealing profits is illegal. Doesn't matter what the method was.

[–] futatorius@lemm.ee 21 points 2 months ago (3 children)

And yet Xitter, Farcebook and similar platforms still publish their stats as if all their users are real human beings. So why isn't that fraud?

[–] shuzuko@midwest.social 21 points 2 months ago

Because it's only fraud if a normal person makes money from it, duh 🤪

[–] dabster291@lemmy.zip 13 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

People who are ~~not~~ part of the wealthy elite stealing profits is ~~il~~legal.

[–] Summzashi@lemmy.one 3 points 2 months ago

Plausible deniability is the answer.

[–] xenoclast@lemmy.world 12 points 2 months ago

This is the truth. He would have been fine if he was super rich

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