Deepfake case study · Audio
Amazon Music, Apple Music, Spotify, and YouTube Music deepfake (Mar 2026)
Michael Smith used AI to generate thousands of songs and then used bots to fraudulently stream them billions of times, diverting royalties from real artists and rights holders. He defrauded music streaming platforms…
- Incident date
- Mar 2026
- Target
- Amazon Music, Apple Music, Spotify, and YouTube Music
Updated May 6, 2026 · 1 min read
Michael Smith used AI to generate thousands of songs and then used bots to fraudulently stream them billions of times, diverting royalties from real artists and rights holders. He defrauded music streaming platforms out of $8 million. These streaming platforms include Amazon Music, Apple Music, Spotify, and YouTube Music