The songs that the AI CEO provided to Smith originally had file names full of randomized numbers and letters such as “n_7a2b2d74-1621-4385-895d-b1e4af78d860.mp3,” the DOJ noted in its detailed press release.

When uploading them to streaming platforms, including Amazon Music, Apple Music, Spotify, and YouTube Music, the man would then change the songs’ names to words like “Zygotes,” “Zygotic,” and “Zyme Bedewing,” whatever that is.

The artist naming convention also followed a somewhat similar pattern, with names ranging from the normal-sounding “Calvin Mann” to head-scratchers like “Calorie Event,” “Calms Scorching,” and “Calypso Xored.”

To manufacture streams for these fake songs, Smith allegedly used bots that stream the songs billions of times without any real person listening. As with similar schemes, the bots’ meaningless streams were ultimately converted to royalty paychecks for the people behind them.

    • @[email protected]
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      333 months ago

      America’s darling Jeff Bezos exploited a flaw in his book suppliers policies to gain an unfair edge on competitors in the early days of Amazon. Best business man ever: give him the key to the city and a dick-shaped rocket ship.

      He also got rich daddy and rich friend money to get money for his totally original and non-derivative idea of “selling things online”. Maybe that’s where this guy went wrong? No rich daddy?

      • @[email protected]
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        273 months ago

        Nah he is saying the streaming services should fix their flaw / the guy shouldn’t have consequences for what he did, as it was all inputted in a legal way it seems.

        • @[email protected]
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          233 months ago

          Yeah but he is messing with rich people’s money and that is a #1 no no. If he was scamming poor people no one would have cared.

          • @[email protected]
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            63 months ago

            I mean hopefully they’ll drop the case, and fix the underlying issues to ensure the artists get paid, and the scams don’t continue. The world isn’t that nice though is it.

          • @[email protected]
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            43 months ago

            This is what fucked Bernie Madoff.

            If this person had gone to VC’s with a pitch for ‘AI listening model’ with the explanation that “Now musicians can up load their songs to streaming services and AI will listen to make sure their pitch and tonality is accurate and that the beat is correct.” or some bullshit like that. Then it would have been ‘legal’

            • @[email protected]
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              53 months ago

              That would be a completely different piece of software. It didn’t check their pitch or their tonality or their beat. It was barely an AI.

              All it did was listened to the music.

              So yes if he had written a completely different piece of software that did something completely different he could have pitched it completely differently and the outcome could have been completely different.

          • @[email protected]
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            103 months ago

            I think you’re missing the key part of the problem. It isn’t the AI that’s the issue.

            The problem is that he was being paid for how many listeners his AI songs got. But he used bots to “listen” to the songs. Nobody actually listened to his AI music.

            The flaw in the system was that they couldn’t detect his bots. (And the bots are not AI)

            • @[email protected]
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              13 months ago

              If money is people ( citizens united ish ) , Then playing this music 9ver speakers to your dollar bills would legally be a listen?

      • @[email protected]
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        23 months ago

        I mean I also agree that this seems like it shouldn’t be illegal, but as per what you’re saying, obviously people can use python for malicious intent, what do you mean?

        • @[email protected]
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          22 months ago

          I mean that creators of a tool shouldn’t be liable for a crime committed with that tool. Unless the tool was purposely made for doing crimes.

      • @[email protected]
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        3 months ago

        Only if Guido developed Python with the specific and exclusive intent being that it should be used for that purpose, and even then it wouldn’t be an open-and-shut case. And since it was developed over 25 years ago, that’s more than a bit unlikely.