Comment on Man Arrested for Creating Fake Bands With AI, Then Making $10 Million by Listening to Their Songs With Bots

smokin_shinobi@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

• Vent@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  The headline focuses on the wrong thing. Making a bunch of crappy songs and uploading the to Spotify and other streaming services is perfectly legal, AI or not.

  The illegal part is that he created lots and lots of fake accounts that constantly streamed his songs and masked them to look like authentic listens. So much so that he was making $110k per month. That is straight-up fraud, which is what he was arrested for.

  It has nothing to do with AI, but that makes more people click on the article.

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• HappyTimeHarry@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  most lilely money laundering. Not really a new scam just adding AI to an old one

  youtu.be/et8R5i5UEjY

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  • Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    It’s not money laundering, they were creating fake engagement and getting advertising revenue out of it.

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    • Badeendje@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      Could be if the revenue was paid out to non existing aliasses and then transferred to himself.

      But getting paid royalties directly by Spotify would not need to be laundered as it’s legit money for the irs.

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      • Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

        Yeah, it’s just a good old fashioned grift by the sound of it.

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    • HappyTimeHarry@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      getting bots to fake engagement for a profit is money laundering, believe it or not. its a pretty vague crime that basically amounts to getting paid in a way thats deceptive, in this case the deception is the bots.

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      • Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

        Hmm. If that’s true, the legal definition and the definition we typically use are very different.

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