AI, Bots and Streaming Royalties: The Michael Smith Case

Michael Smith was sentenced to 18 months in prison on October 6, 2026, by Judge John G. Koeltl. He had pleaded guilty on March 19, 2026, to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. The case involved artificial intelligence and automated accounts that boosted his song streams. The platforms included Amazon Music, Apple Music, Spotify, and YouTube Music.

From 2017 to 2024, Smith created thousands of bot accounts and used super-intelligence tools to produce hundreds of thousands of songs. These bot accounts streamed his AI-generated tracks billions of times, and at times as many as 10,000 Bot Accounts were used simultaneously. In April 2023, Smith’s Bot Accounts used family-plan streams to play his tracks 80.9 million times while another popular artist's family-plan streams numbered 9.3 million on the same platform. While streaming services pay royalties from a shared pool, Smith’s actions took a large share of that pool.

Smith was ordered to pay $8,091,843.64 in forfeiture and to serve two years of supervised release after his prison term. The scheme diverted money that would otherwise have gone to real artists and songwriters, who were harmed by the fraud.