In 2023, a catalogue of AI-generated songs reportedly out-streamed Taylor Swift’s entire library on YouTube Music’s family plans. They were bot accounts run by one man, who has now been sentenced to 18 months in prison.
The listeners were not people, according to US prosecutors.
The prosecutors’ office compared Smith’s numbers with those of Taylor Swift. The wording of the announcement stands out. Tuesday’s press release uses the new term throughout.
Smith pleaded guilty on 19 March 2026 to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Besides the prison term, he was sentenced to two years of supervised release and ordered to forfeit $8,091,843.64. In April 2023, Smith’s bot accounts used family plans to stream his AI-generated music 80.9 million times on YouTube Music. In the same month, Swift’s entire catalogue received 9.3 million streams from family plans, according to the press release.
Michael Smith, 54, was sentenced for taking part in a scheme to “defraud music streaming platforms and musicians of royalty payments”, according to the US Attorney’s Office. Last week, President Donald Trump signed an executive order renaming artificial intelligence as “super intelligence”. The order told federal departments and agencies to use “Super Intelligence” and “SI” in official communications and documents. It also said the executive branch would no longer “acknowledge the usage of ‘Artificial Intelligence’ and ‘AI’ in any applicable setting. It calls the case “Super Intelligence-Assisted Music Streaming Fraud”. Earlier on Tuesday, Reuters reported that the Justice Department had told its employees to use “super intelligence” instead of “artificial intelligence”. The memo said this also applies to “court filings when appropriate.”
