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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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[–] allidoislietomyself@lemmy.world 23 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Yeah but he is messing with rich people's money and that is a #1 no no. If he was scamming poor people no one would have cared.

[–] LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I mean hopefully they'll drop the case, and fix the underlying issues to ensure the artists get paid, and the scams don't continue. The world isn't that nice though is it.

[–] JIMMERZ@lemm.ee 4 points 2 months ago

That’s the outcome that seems most logical. I want to see real artists get paid for creating real music. The current system is too prohibitive and unrewarding.

If an artist spends hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars creating their work, only to see a return of maybe a few dollars that’s a big problem.

If someone can use AI to game that same system for millions of dollars by creating loads of fake music in a fraction of the time; that’s a symptom of the big problem.

The current system of streaming just isn’t beneficial to artists. I imagine it’s not great for movies either. Yet, these companies are taking in HUGE profits. It was only a matter of time before someone tried to take advantage of a loophole.

If you think about it, it’s kind of like reverse piracy.

[–] GoofSchmoofer@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

This is what fucked Bernie Madoff.

If this person had gone to VC's with a pitch for 'AI listening model' with the explanation that "Now musicians can up load their songs to streaming services and AI will listen to make sure their pitch and tonality is accurate and that the beat is correct." or some bullshit like that. Then it would have been 'legal'

[–] stom@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 2 months ago

That would be a completely different piece of software. It didn't check their pitch or their tonality or their beat. It was barely an AI.

All it did was listened to the music.

So yes if he had written a completely different piece of software that did something completely different he could have pitched it completely differently and the outcome could have been completely different.