10,000 Bot Accounts, AI Songs: US Man Jailed for $8-Million Streaming Fraud

In 2023, a catalogue of AI-generated songs reportedly out-streamed Taylor Swift's entire library on YouTube Music's family plans. According to US prosecutors, the listeners were not people. They were bot accounts run by one man, who has now been sentenced to 18 months in prison.

Michael Smith, 54, was sentenced for taking part in a scheme to "defraud music streaming platforms and musicians of royalty payments", according to the US Attorney's Office.

Smith pleaded guilty on 19 March 2026 to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Besides the prison term, he was sentenced to two years of supervised release and ordered to forfeit $8,091,843.64.

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Prosecutors said the fraud ran from 2017 to 2024 and had three steps. First, Smith created thousands of fake accounts, known as bot accounts, on streaming platforms such as Amazon Music, Apple Music, Spotify and YouTube Music. Second, he used software to make those accounts stream songs he owned, which were generally created using AI. Third, he collected the royalties from those fake streams.

At times he used as many as 10,000 bot accounts at once. The accounts were set up with fake email addresses and "fraudulently obtained debit cards", prosecutors said.

To avoid being caught, Smith spread his streams across thousands of songs. Prosecutors said this prevented unusual streaming patterns on any single track, which would probably have alerted the platforms.

In an email, Smith explained that he needed "a TON of songs fast" to get around the platforms' "anti-fraud policies". He used AI to create hundreds of thousands of songs, which his bot accounts then streamed billions of times. Prosecutors said this brought him more than $8 million in royalties.

Each time a song is streamed, the songwriter, the performer and, in some cases, other rights holders are entitled to a small payment. These payments come from a shared pool of money and are divided in proportion. 

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The prosecutors' office compared Smith's numbers with those of Taylor Swift. In April 2023, Smith's bot accounts used family plans to stream his AI-generated music 80.9 million times on YouTube Music. In the same month, Swift's entire catalogue received 9.3 million streams from family plans, according to the press release.

"Michael Smith exploited super intelligence technology to generate a fraud," said US Attorney Jamie McDonald. "By flooding music streaming platforms with automated bots in the place of consumers, and fake songs in the place of creativity, Smith robbed millions in royalty payments from genuine artists and their fans. This Office is committed to ensuring the integrity of all markets, and protecting the public from those who use super intelligence for fraud."

The wording of the announcement stands out. Last week, President Donald Trump signed an executive order renaming artificial intelligence as "super intelligence". The order told federal departments and agencies to use "Super Intelligence" and "SI" in official communications and documents. It also said the executive branch would no longer "acknowledge the usage of 'Artificial Intelligence' and 'AI' in any applicable setting."

Tuesday's press release uses the new term throughout. It calls the case "Super Intelligence-Assisted Music Streaming Fraud". Earlier on Tuesday, Reuters reported that the Justice Department had told its employees to use "super intelligence" instead of "artificial intelligence". The memo said this also applies to "court filings when appropriate."