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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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[–] phoenixz@lemmy.ca 67 points 1 month ago (9 children)

Honestly, what did he do wrong? He made crappy cheap music and listened to it using AI and bots. listening to it must have cost him subscription money, so I guess he just listened enough to get the songs popular enough so that other would listen, and they did and everyone made money.

Yeah, it's all cheap shit but it's wrong when he does it but totally fine when so many other media companies do it?

[–] Cethin@lemmy.zip 5 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (3 children)

Yeah, it's an exploit but it doesn't seem illegal. It seems like the issue is with whatever service. They need to fix their contract or their software. Maybe it is in the contract or EULA that you can't do this sort of thing already though, in which case it's fair game.

[–] futatorius@lemm.ee 7 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Maybe it is in the contract or EULA that you can’t do this sort of thing already though

Then that would be a civil matter and he wouldn't have been arrested for it.

[–] octopus_ink@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 month ago

I mean, being arrested doesn't mean a crime was committed. It means he's accused of a crime. I'll be interested to see if there is actually a conviction in the end.

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