Man Who Made $8 Million With AI Songs and Bot Streams Asks Judge for No Prison Time, Says Artists Suffered No 'Perceptible Harm'

Michael Smith, the North Carolina man who admitted using artificial intelligence and automated streaming bots to fraudulently collect more than $8 million in music royalties, is asking a federal judge to spare him from prison.

Smith’s lawyers filed a sentencing memorandum on September 22 in Manhattan federal court seeking probation instead of incarceration. According to the filing as reported by Music Business Worldwide and Billboard, the defense argues that the financial effect on any individual songwriter or artist was extremely small because the losses were distributed across millions of rightsholders.

The lawyers contend that “no individual artist or songwriter suffered any perceptible harm” from Smith’s conduct and characterize the effect on individual creators as a tiny portion of the overall streaming royalty pool. The argument is part of the defense’s effort to persuade U.S. District Judge John G. Koeltl to impose a sentence below the federal guidelines.

Smith pleaded guilty on March 19, 2026, to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. The U.S. Department of Justice said he created hundreds of thousands of AI-generated songs and used automated accounts to stream them billions of times while attempting to make the activity resemble genuine listening by real consumers.

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As part of his guilty plea, Smith agreed to forfeit $8,091,843.64. The conspiracy charge carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison. According to the latest reporting, federal sentencing guidelines call for approximately 46 to 57 months, while the U.S. Probation Office has recommended a shorter 24-month prison term.

Prosecutors had not yet submitted their own sentencing recommendation when the latest filing was reported. Smith’s lawyers also cited his lack of a previous criminal record, character-reference letters and the potential impact imprisonment would have on his family in support of their request for probation.

The government has taken a sharply different view of the financial impact. When Smith entered his guilty plea, U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton said the fraudulent streams diverted royalties from legitimate artists and rightsholders. The Department of Justice describes the case as a scheme to defraud both music streaming platforms and musicians of royalty payments.

Smith’s case began with a September 2024 indictment and has been described by federal prosecutors as the first U.S. criminal case involving artificially inflated music streaming of this kind. His previously scheduled July 29 sentencing did not take place, and Music Business Worldwide reported that no replacement sentencing date had appeared on the public docket as of September 25.

Watch Spotify for Artists explain artificial streaming, how fraudulent streams are generated and how the music industry is attempting to combat them, below:

Written by Gino Alache – Music Journalist

IMAGE CREDIT: Archive / AI-generated music and streaming illustration.