The US Copyright Office has opened a public inquiry into music streaming fraud, with a specific interest in how AI-generated music feeds it. A notice of inquiry went into the Federal Register on 7 October 2026. It asks how streaming fraud is carried out, what it costs the music economy and what role generative AI plays in it. The Office is acting on a request from Wisconsin Republican Rep. Scott Fitzgerald, who wrote to it on 21 May on behalf of the House Judiciary Committee.
The timetable is short. Initial comments are due on 23 November 2026, with reply comments on 21 December, both by 11:59pm Eastern. The notice lists ten subjects it wants views on, among them industry practices that may enable fraud, the effect on live music, trusted distributors, content verification, clawing back royalties, fines and takedowns, anti-fraud vendors such as Beatdapp, a shared fraud database, metadata standards, and a way of labelling content that should not qualify for statutory royalties.
It also asks about legal remedies. These include no-fault injunctive relief, with the American Copyright Protection Act of 2026 and the DEFEND IP Act cited as reference points, as well as prosecution by state and local authorities and links to organised crime. The notice, dated 5 October, names dilution of the royalty pool as the main harm and lists manipulated playlist placement and distorted tour-planning data as secondary ones. For scale it cites Deezer's figures: as much as 85% of streams on fully AI-made tracks in 2025 were fraudulent, and AI tracks made up about 44% of daily uploads in April and over half by June, roughly 90,000 a day.
Deezer's numbers frame the inquiry's AI angle: the notice describes fully AI-made tracks as a growing share of what is uploaded and as the place where fraudulent streaming concentrates. Fitzgerald's concern, as the reporting describes it, is that a finite royalty pool is shared out among more and more tracks, so human rights holders lose revenue whenever bot-driven plays on AI uploads claim a slice of it. The Office is asking for submissions from across the industry on how the fraud works and what could stop it.
Fitzgerald's letter takes a balanced line, saying AI is not wrong as a creative tool but can help criminals commit fraud and divert a finite pool of royalties away from human rights holders. The industry has been vocal. IFPI, reacting to a recent sentencing, said enforcement is only one part of the answer and that prevention and detection matter too, pointing to its Streaming Integrity Initiative. NMPA chief David Israelite has called streaming fraud a national security issue.
The inquiry arrives amid a run of related events. Michael Smith of North Carolina was sentenced on 6 October to 18 months after pleading guilty in March to wire-fraud conspiracy over an AI-song and bot-stream scheme; he must forfeit about $8.09 million, though the notice repeats the roughly $10 million alleged in 2024. IFPI launched the initiative on 14 September with 24 signatories, while DistroKid, TuneCore, Believe and UnitedMasters had not signed at launch. UMG sued DistroKid in Delaware on 15 September, a case the notice mentions in a footnote. An earlier Fitzgerald letter led to a 2025 inquiry into performance rights organisations that drew more than 5,000 comments.