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Fake AI Songs Rake in $10M: Music's Bot Army Bites Back

One guy. Thousands of AI tracks. Billions of ghost listens. And $10 million in stolen royalties. Welcome to music's AI nightmare.

Priya Sundaram 📅 Mar 21, 2026 ⏱️ 3 min read 👁️ 8 views

⚡ Key Takeaways

Michael Smith pleaded guilty to $10M AI music fraud using bots for billions of fake streams.
Music royalties diluted by AI floods; first major prosecution signals crackdown.
Suno's 7M daily tracks threaten human artists, echoing past industry crises.

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Hardware and infrastructure reporter. Tracks GPU wars, chip design, and the compute economy.

#AI music fraud #Suno AI #generative AI scam #streaming royalties

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Originally reported by The Guardian - AI