A North Carolina man pleaded guilty to orchestrating a years-long music streaming fraud scheme that used artificial intelligence and thousands of bot accounts to siphon more than $8 million in royalties. Michael Smith, 54, admitted to inflating streaming numbers for hundreds of thousands of AI-generated songs by deploying thousands of fake accounts across major platforms, including Amazon Music, Apple Music, Spotify and YouTube Music, according to court documents. U.S. prosecutors said Smith w...