Bruce Lawson ✅ ♫ ♿ ✌️♂️✊20h ago
A man used LLMs to generate hundreds of thousands of "songs", then used bots to stream them billions of times, to collect $8m in royalties. https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/north-carolina-man-pleads-guilty-music-streaming-fraud-aided-artificial-intelligence-0 Is there a better metaphor for late-stage capitalism than burning resources to make songs that are never listened to, then steaming them to robots that will never hear them, ad infinitum?
Show threadGary 19h ago

@brucelawson it's more than a little bit Devil's Advocate, but I'm struggling to see how this is fraud other than that it cost Spotify $8m

The money certainly didn't get diverted away from other more deserving artists. (*edit* apparently it does, as Spotify no longer pays artists per stream, but as a percentage of overall streams). It's only Spotify that's out of pocket because someone gamed their broken business model.

Fuck 'em 😒

(But of course we all know who the US courts will side with)

Show threadAlessandro Corazza 🇨🇦19h ago

@WiteWulf

Yeah, same - at worst this seems a violation of Spotify ToS for siccing fake listeners on their servers. Nothing was taken from other artists, and Spotify allowed him to upload the deluge of AI slop tracks in the first place.

@brucelawson

Show threadTor Iver Wilhelmsen18h ago
@alessandro @WiteWulf @brucelawson The court, obviously, disagreed with your whitewashing of the fraud.
Show threadAmoshias18h ago

@toriver @alessandro @WiteWulf @brucelawson I like how you start by assuming that it's fraud, and then attack the person who you are responding to for going against your assumption!

care to support your assertion that it is fraud? it certainly MIGHT be! but you're definitely wrong about what "the court" said - he pled guilty, there was no court ruling in this case.

Show threadAdrian Riskin 

@Amoshias @toriver @alessandro @WiteWulf @brucelawson

The court had to rule that there was a factual basis for the plea before accepting it per Rule 11(b)(3) of the federal rules of criminal procedure. ⁨https://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/frcrmp/rule_11⁩

11:45pmWeb
Show threadAmoshias10h ago
@AdrianRiskin @toriver @alessandro @WiteWulf @brucelawson and...?
Show threadWesDym9h ago
@AdrianRiskin This thread got a lot quieter and more civil once I blocked that jerk.