Michael Smith, the North Carolina man who admitted collecting more than $8 million in royalties by having bots play AI-generated songs billions of times, wants to stay out of prison. His lawyers filed a sentencing memorandum in Manhattan federal court on 22 September asking Judge John Koeltl for probation, according to MBW, which draws on Billboard's account of the filing.
The defence case is that the harm was tiny and diffuse: spread across millions of artists and songwriters, no one person lost anything measurable, and bigger players allegedly did much the same. It also points to his clean record, letters from supporters, filed under seal along with redacted health details of other people, and what a jail term would do to his family.
The numbers point the other way. He pleaded guilty in March to a single wire-fraud conspiracy count carrying up to five years; federal guidelines suggest 46 to 57 months, and the probation office recommended 24. He has agreed to forfeit about $8.09 million. Prosecutors said the songs were produced with the head of an AI music company and a promoter, and the Mechanical Licensing Collective held back royalties after spotting odd streaming patterns.
Sentencing was due on 29 July but passed with no new date on the docket, and prosecutors have not yet filed their own submission. Whatever the judge decides will be the first US sentence for AI-assisted streaming fraud; the nearest precedent MBW cites is Danish, where a stream-inflation scheme ended in a two-year term on appeal.
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