Lemmy Today

1,493 readers
77 users here now

Welcome to lemmy.today!

About us

🤗 Thanks for joining our little instance here, located in Oregon. The idea is to have a fast, stable instance and allow users to subscribe to whatever content they want from here.

😎 We dont block any other instances. We will keep it that way unless it becomes a moderation problem.

🤠 We will be around for a very long time, so you dont have to worry about us shutting down the instance anytime soon. We like performance and stability in our servers, and will upgrade the instance when its needed.

🥹 Make sure to join a lot of remote communities to get a good feed going. How to do that is explained here.

Lemmy mobile apps

You should start using one of these ASAP since the web browser user interface is quite ugly, even with themes.

Optional Lemmy web browser user interfaces

Rules

Contact the admin

founded 1 year ago
ADMINS
mrmanager
Buelldozer
listing: all - local
search
1
293
Man Arrested for Creating Fake Bands With AI, Then Making $10 Million by Listening to Their Songs With Bots (futurism.com)
 
 

An alleged scammer has been arrested under suspicion that he used AI to create a wild number of fake bands — and fake music to go with them — and faking untold streams with more bots to earn millions in ill-gotten revenue.

In a press release, the Department of Justice announced that investigators have arrested 52-year-old North Carolina man Michael Smith, who has been charged with a purportedly seven-year scheme that involved using his real-life music skills to make more than $10 million in royalties.

Indicted on three counts involving money laundering and wire fraud, the Charlotte-area man faces a maximum of 20 years per charge.

2
36
Man Arrested for Creating Fake Bands With AI, Then Making $10 Million by Listening to Their Songs With Bots (futurism.com)
 
 

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/19494425

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."

That one of you? ;-)

3
26
Man Arrested for Creating Fake Bands With AI, Then Making $10 Million by Listening to Their Songs With Bots (futurism.com)
submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) by BeatTakeshi@lemmy.world to c/fakebandnames@lemmy.world
3 comments fedilink
 
 

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."

Is that one of you? ;-)

4
124
Man Arrested for Creating Fake Bands With AI, Then Making $10 Million by Listening to Their Songs With Bots (futurism.com)
 
 

The feds seem to have him dead to rights.

5
1085
Man Arrested for Creating Fake Bands With AI, Then Making $10 Million by Listening to Their Songs With Bots (futurism.com)
 
 

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.

view more: next ›