TLDR: The music industry is facing a growing crisis dubbed ‘AI slop,’ where fraudsters are leveraging artificial intelligence to create and distribute fake songs, often under the names of legitimate or even deceased artists. This sophisticated fraud, involving AI-generated tracks and streaming bots, is siphoning millions in royalties and raising serious concerns about the integrity of music streaming platforms and the impact on artists and listener trust.
The music streaming landscape is currently battling a pervasive and alarming phenomenon known as ‘AI slop,’ characterized by the proliferation of fraudulent songs generated by artificial intelligence and released under the guise of legitimate artists. This sophisticated form of fraud is not only diverting substantial royalty payments but also undermining the trust between artists, platforms, and listeners.
A prominent case highlighting this issue is that of musician Michael Smith from North Carolina. In September 2024, Smith was charged with orchestrating a scheme to defraud music streaming services of over $10 million in royalty payments. Prosecutors allege that Smith utilized artificial intelligence to generate hundreds of thousands of songs and then employed thousands of automated programs, or ‘bots,’ to stream these AI-created tracks billions of times. U.S. Attorney Damian Williams stated that Smith “fraudulently streamed songs created with artificial intelligence billions of times in order to steal royalties,” emphasizing that these funds “should have been paid to musicians, songwriters, and other rights holders whose songs were legitimately streamed.” The FBI noted that Smith’s scheme involved using over a thousand bot accounts simultaneously to stream his music across various platforms. The case has been labeled as ‘unprecedented’ and ‘the first of its kind’ in the press, revealing the scale of this emerging threat.
The problem extends far beyond individual cases. Fraudsters are actively flooding major platforms like Spotify and Apple Music with AI-generated content. Deezer, a music streaming service, estimated in April 2025 that over 20,000 fully AI-created tracks were being ingested into its platform daily, accounting for 18% of all new tracks – nearly double the number from January of the same year. These tracks are inexpensive and quick to produce, making them an attractive avenue for illicit gains. Fraudsters often use bots, AI, or even human listeners to endlessly stream these fake songs, generating revenue. In other instances, they exploit upload services to place fake songs directly onto the official pages of real artists, thereby siphoning off legitimate royalties.
This manipulation has a significant financial impact on the global music industry, which is valued at $20.4 billion. While Apple Music claims that less than 1% of all streams on its service are manipulated, even this small percentage could translate to hundreds of millions of dollars being skimmed off annually by rogue operators. Darren Owen, Chief Operating Officer of music distribution company Fuga, noted that streaming fraud “started to blow up across the industry” around 2021 and now constitutes 50% of his company’s workload. Fuga employs AI and machine learning to assign a “severity score” to streaming patterns, helping to identify non-human listening.
Legitimate artists are also suffering the consequences. The lax vetting processes of streaming platforms allow fraudulent tracks to slip through, sometimes impersonating deceased artists like Blaze Foley and Guy Clark, or even active bands such as Toto. A track titled ‘Name This Night,’ almost certainly AI-generated, appeared on Toto’s official Spotify page, prompting guitarist Steve Lukather to confirm its inauthenticity and criticize Spotify for its oversight. This highlights a critical need for platforms to bolster their verification systems and implement proactive measures rather than relying on reactive content removal. The industry’s reliance on automated detection systems, while necessary, can also lead to legitimate artists having their music mistakenly taken offline, as seen with Northern Irish rock band Final Thirteen, whose music was removed due to an unexplained spike in streams.
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As streaming now accounts for over two-thirds of the music industry’s global revenue, the integrity of royalty distribution is paramount. The ‘AI slop’ phenomenon underscores the urgent pressure on the streaming industry to adapt to the evolving challenges posed by artificial intelligence, ensuring fair compensation for artists and maintaining listener trust.
