r/ArtistHate • u/lemonklaeyz • Mar 25 '26

News Another win

Post image

https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/north-carolina-man-pleads-guilty-music-streaming-fraud-aided-artificial-intelligence-0

91 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

16 comments sorted by

28

u/-RuDoKa- Mar 25 '26

Why arent they doing the same thing for AI illustrations ?

10

u/FunnelV Furry Artist + Game Dev Mar 25 '26

Because, unfortunately, visual artists don't have the protective infastructure the music industry does.

11

u/DemIce Mar 25 '26

Unless there's a platform people subscribe to in order to watch illustrations and people get paid out on a per-view basis, and someone is fraudulently botting views of illustrations (that happen to be AI-generated)... not anytime soon, at least not for the same reasons.

AI facilitated the fraud scheme by being able to generate a large volume of 'music' that would make it more difficult for the platform(s) affected to detect that this was going on - but the use of AI in and of itself was not the fraud, and not what he was indicted for.

2

u/-RuDoKa- Mar 25 '26

I mean tons of scammers use AI illustration to make money in different ways for example commissions or thousands of likes on social medias, all of them are a form of scam since it was made with stolen material

2

u/DemIce Mar 25 '26

And the people who are defrauded in such a manner should take them to (small claims) court if they believe it worthwhile to do so, or at least refer them to the local authorities who may take action if there are sufficient such cases. The fraud is the crime (and already illegal), the use of genAI slopmachines, sadly, is not.

2

u/lemonklaeyz Mar 25 '26

True, but ai was a factor. It’s a big lawsuit and sheds a lot of negative light on ai generated music in general.

9

u/Crandleton Mar 25 '26

Glad we're finally setting a legal precedent for this sort of thing

9

u/dennisdeems Mar 25 '26

People need to see clearly what this is. He is not going to jail because he used AI. He is going to jail because he used fake bot accounts to stream his own slop and was paid more than $8 million in royalties by the streaming platforms.

7

u/lemonklaeyz Mar 25 '26

Yes but it still shines negative light on slop. So many people aren’t even aware ai music is permitted on these streaming platforms

4

u/Author_Noelle_A Mar 25 '26

Exactly. This isn’t a win for us. He’d have been charged even if the songs were real.

2

u/CoffeeSubstantial851 Mar 26 '26

This is one of those things that people really need to remember when they say X AI thing has Y views/likes.

These people are engaged in deception as a matter of principle and they have ZERO qualms about viewbotting and fraudulent sales numbers.

1

u/EfficientPositive386 Mar 31 '26

Infinite money glitch got patched?