TECH NEWS – Artificial intelligence can be used for harmful purposes. Michael Smith’s case is proof of that.

Have you ever come across an extremely popular artist that you had never heard of before, making you wonder if you had been living under a rock and had failed to notice an international phenomenon? Recently, there was a “musician” whose billions of streams came almost entirely from bots. As if that weren’t enough, the music itself was generated by AI.

This case is discussed in detail in a press release published on justice.gov. According to Jay Clayton, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Michael Smith, a man from North Carolina, used artificial intelligence to generate thousands of fake songs and then streamed these fake songs billions of times. Although the songs and listeners were fake, the millions of dollars Smith stole were real. Thus, it can be said that Smith got rich with the help of artificial intelligence.

On Thursday, Clayton announced that Smith had pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit electronic fraud. Smith’s operation was massive: his bot accounts played AI-generated songs hundreds of thousands of times, allowing him to fraudulently obtain more than $8 million in royalties. As it turns out, small royalty payments add up if you deploy enough bots. Many small amounts still add up to a lot.

Smith’s sentence won’t be handed down until July, but the crime carries a maximum prison sentence of five years. He has also agreed to forfeit more than $8 million in ill-gotten gains to the state. While it’s no secret that artificial intelligence is responsible for the “RAMpocalypse” and other tangible problems, the possibility that it could lead to bizarre crimes and unethical behavior, such as cloning journalists without their consent, will likely preoccupy us for years to come.

Of course, the question is whether someone could get away with this in other parts of the world. We could certainly give that some thought.

Source: PCGamer, Justice.gov