9/23-Manhattan prosecutors have accused Michael Smith, a 52-year-old man from North Carolina, of using mass produced AI generated music and a complicated network of bots and fake internet accounts to fraudulently acquire $10 million in royalties. The alleged scheme ran over an eight-year period, during which Smith uploaded hundreds of thousands of AI created songs to popular streaming platforms and then used fake bot accounts to continuously stream them, earning him millions in royalties (and in turn depriving legitimate artists of them). Smith has pleaded not guilty to the charges of wire fraud and conspiracy.