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All products and services featured are independently chosen by editors. However, Billboard may receive a commission on orders placed through its retail links, and the retailer may receive certain auditable data for accounting purposes. Taking your music on the go usually comes in the form of listening to songs on your smartphone through your earbuds, […]

On Sept. 4, the public learned of the first-ever U.S. criminal case addressing streaming fraud. In the indictment, federal prosecutors claim that a North Carolina-based musician named Michael “Mike” Smith stole $10 million dollars from streaming services by using bots to artificially inflate the streaming numbers for hundreds of thousands of mostly AI-generated songs. A day later, Billboard reported a link between Smith and the popular generative AI music company Boomy; Boomy’s CEO Alex Mitchell and Smith were listed on hundreds of tracks as co-writers. 
(The AI company and its CEO that supplied songs to Smith were not charged with any crime and were left unnamed in the indictment. Mitchell replied to Billboard’s request for comment, saying, “We were shocked by the details in the recently filed indictment of Michael Smith, which we are reviewing. Michael Smith consistently represented himself as legitimate.”) 

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This case marks the end of generative AI music’s honeymoon phase (or “hype” phase) with the music industry establishment. Though there have always been naysayers about AI in the music business, the industry’s top leaders have been largely optimistic about it, provided AI tools were used ethically and responsibly. “If we strike the right balance, I believe AI will amplify human imagination and enrich musical creativity in extraordinary new ways,” said Lucian Grainge, Universal Music Group’s chairman/CEO, in a statement about UMG’s partnership with YouTube for its AI Music Incubator. “You have to embrace technology [like AI], because it’s not like you can put technology in a bottle,” WMG CEO Robert Kyncl said during an onstage interview at the Code Conference last September.

Each major music label group has established its own partnerships to get in on the AI gold rush since late 2022. UMG coupled with YouTube for an AI incubator program and SoundLabs for “responsible” AI plug-ins. Sony Music started collaborating with Vermillio for an AI remix project around David Gilmour and The Orb’s latest album. Warner Music Group’s ADA struck a deal with Boomy, which was previously distributing its tracks with Downtown, and invested in dynamic music company Lifescore. 

Artists and producers jumped in, too — from Lauv’s collaboration with Hooky to create an AI-assisted Korean-language translation of his newest single to 3LAU’s investment in Suno. Songwriters reportedly used AI voices on pitch records. Artists like Drake and Timbaland used unauthorized AI voices to resurrect stars like Tupac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G. in songs they posted to social media. Metro Boomin sampled an AI song from Udio to create his viral “BBL Drizzy” remix. (Drake later sampled “BBL Drizzy” himself in his feature on the song “U My Everything” by Sexyy Red.) The estate of “La Vie En Rose” singer Edith Piaf, in partnership with WMG, developed an animated documentary of her life, using AI voices and images. The list goes on. 

While these industry leaders haven’t spoken publicly about the overall state of AI music in a few months, I can’t imagine their tone is now as sunny as it once was, given the events of the summer. It all started with Sony Music releasing a statement that warned over 700 AI companies to not scrape the label group’s copyrighted data in May. Then Billboard broke the news that the majors were filing a sweeping copyright infringement lawsuit against Suno and Udio in June. In July, WMG issued a similar warning to AI companies as Sony had. In August, Billboard reported that AI music adoption has been much slower than was anticipated, the NO FAKES Act was introduced to the Senate, and Donald Trump deepfaked a false Taylor Swift endorsement of his presidential run on Truth Social — an event that Swift herself referenced as a driving factor in her social media post endorsing Kamala Harris for president.

And finally, the AI music streaming fraud case dropped. It proved what many had feared: AI music flooding onto streaming services is diverting significant sums of royalties away from human artists, while also making streaming fraud harder to detect. I imagine Grainge is particularly interested in this case, given that its findings support his recent crusade to change the way streaming services pay out royalties to benefit “professional artists” over hobbyists, white noise makers and AI content generators.

When I posted my follow up reporting on LinkedIn, Declan McGlynn, director of communications for Voice-Swap, an “ethical” AI voice company, summed up people’s feelings well in his comment: “Can yall stop stealing shit for like, five seconds[?] Makes it so much harder for the rest of us.” 

One AI music executive told me that the majors have said that they would use a “carrot and stick” approach to this growing field, providing opportunities to the good guys and meting out punishment for the bad guys. Some of those carrots were handed out early while the hype was still fresh around AI because music companies wanted to appear innovative — and because they were desperate to prove to shareholders and artists that they learned from the mistakes of Napster, iTunes, early YouTube and TikTok. Now that they’ve made their point and the initial shock of these models has worn off, the majors have started using those sticks. 

This summer, then, has represented a serious vibe shift, to borrow New York magazine’s memeable term. All this recent bad press for generative AI music, including the reports about slow adoption, seems destined to result in far fewer new partnerships announced between generative AI music companies and the music business establishment, at least for the time being. Investment could be harder to come by, too. Some players who benefitted from early hype but never amassed an audience or formed a strong business will start to fall. 

This doesn’t mean that generative AI music-related companies won’t find their place in the industry eventually — some certainly will. This is just a common phase in the life cycle of new tech. Investors will probably increasingly turn their attention to other AI music companies, those largely not of the generative variety, that promise to solve the problems created by generative AI music. Metadata management and attribution, fingerprinting, AI music detection, music discovery — it’s a lot less sexy than a consumer-facing product making songs at the click of a button, but it’s a lot safer, and is solving real problems in practical ways. 

There’s still time to continue to set the guardrails for generative AI music before it is adopted en masse. The music business has already started working toward protecting artists’ names, images, likenesses and voices and has fought back against unauthorized AI training on their copyrights. Now it’s time for the streaming services to join in and finally set some rules for how AI generated music is treated on its platforms. 

This story was published as part of Billboard’s new music technology newsletter ‘Machine Learnings.’ Sign up for ‘Machine Learnings,’ and Billboard’s other newsletters, here.

If you have any tips about the AI music streaming fraud case, Billboard is continuing to report on it. Please reach out to krobinson@billboard.com. 

All products and services featured are independently chosen by editors. However, Billboard may receive a commission on orders placed through its retail links, and the retailer may receive certain auditable data for accounting purposes. Vlogs continue to be one of the highest consumed mediums — especially on YouTube, which had an estimated viewership of 234 […]

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Source: NurPhoto / Getty / Donald Trump
You can always count on Donald Trump and his family to find a new way to scam.
Fresh off the latest alleged “assassination attempt” on his life, which he wasted no time fundraising on, the disgraced former president hit an X Space for a 40-minute interview where he rehashed his greatest hits on the latest attempt on his life, the border, the evil forces conspiring against him and his granddaughter’s ability to speak foreign languages.
He touched on all of that in an X Space where he was supposed to speak about his latest scam; oops, we mean business venture, a new “crypto platform.”
When he finally got to the point, he touched on World Liberty Financial, which, according to a statement shared on his X account per The Verge’s reporting, “Trump’s new decentralized finance project is to drive “the mass adoption of stablecoins and decentralized finance.”
Even The People Involved Can’t Explain This Mess
According to the website, Trump or any of the other people involved in the Space on X on Monday night did a sh*tty job of explaining what World Liberty Financial is.
Helping to try to explain what the hell the platform is, Corey Caplan, founder of some sh*t called Dolomite, another “decentralized lending platform,” is also working as an adviser on Trump’s latest attempt to scam people out of money and fatten his wallet.
In his explanation, Caplan said World Liberty Financial would “sell and otherwise distribute governance tokens called WLFI.” He notes that sales of the token will be limited to “certain persons who would be eligible to participate in transactions that are exempt from registration under US federal securities law.”
What made the whole thing even funnier was Barron Trump, the family’s expert on Crypto, not being present when it was his turn to speak.
Per The Daily Beast:
Trump’s youngest son Barron, 18, was nowhere to be found when it came time for him to speak, some two hours into the meandering promotional for World Liberty Financial, which even Trump’s crypto sector allies reportedly think is a stupid idea.
“He’s not here anymore,” said Farokh Sarmad, the crypto entrepreneur who hosted the livestream on X. “We took too long. We’re gonna try and get him back.” It would have marked Barron’s first major speaking role in public.
“Damned teenagers,” joked Trump’s eldest child, 46-year-old Donald Jr., who sat in on the livestream along with his 40-year-old brother, Eric.
The gallery below shows more reactions to Donald Trump and his son’s latest scam.

1. Ruh Roh

4. Sounds about right

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All products and services featured are independently chosen by editors. However, Billboard may receive a commission on orders placed through its retail links, and the retailer may receive certain auditable data for accounting purposes.
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Source: BlueTwelve Studio / Annapurna Interactive / Stray
Annapurna Interactive, the game company best known for publishing indie titles like Stray and Neon White, no longer has a staff.
According to Bloomberg, Annapurna Interactive’s entire staff quit after failing to convince Megan Ellison to let them spin off Annapurna Studio’s gaming division into a new company.
“All 25 members of the Annapurna Interactive team collectively resigned,” former president Nathan Gary and staffers said to Bloomberg. “This was one of the hardest decisions we have ever had to make, and we did not take this action lightly.”
A spokesperson for Annapurna said existing games and projects will remain under the company.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Gary along with Annapurna Interactives coheads Deborah Mars and Nathan Vellat would be leaving the company.
The website also reports the company planned to “integrate its in-house gaming operations with the rest of Annapurna’s divisions, which include film, TV and theater.”
Hector Sanchez, the former head of Epic Games’ Unreal Engine games business and a cofounder of Annapurna’s gaming division, revealed last month that he would be president of interactive and new media at Annapurna.
Annapurna is no stranger to success. After releasing award-winning films like Her, American Hustle, and Zero Dark Thirty , the company looked to duplicate that success in gaming.
The company announced in 2020 that it would begin developing its own games, launch an in-house animation division in 2022, and work on a film based on Stray.
Last month, Annapurna partnered with Remedy Entertainment to explore ways to bring popular games Control and Alan Wake to television and theaters.
As expected, the reaction to the news of Annapurna Interactive’s entire staff walking has shocked the video game community.
You can see those reactions below.

2. We had a very similar reaction the news

3. It sure does suck

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When Taylor Swift endorsed Kamala Harris for president on Tuesday (Sept. 10), the singer said she was spurred to action by her fears about artificial intelligence — namely, an incident last month in which Donald Trump posted AI-generated images that falsely claimed the superstar’s support.
Swift’s endorsement, which landed on Instagram just minutes after the conclusion of the Harris-Trump debate, called the Democratic nominee a “steady-handed, gifted leader” who “fights for the rights and causes I believe need a warrior to champion them.” But before those reasons, she pointed first to last month’s deepfake debacle.

Trending on Billboard

“It really conjured up my fears around AI, and the dangers of spreading misinformation,” Swift wrote. “It brought me to the conclusion that I need to be very transparent about my actual plans for this election as a voter. The simplest way to combat misinformation is with the truth.”

Her fears are well-founded, as Swift has been one most prominent victims of AI deepfakes. At the start of 2024, a flood of fake, sexually explicit images of Swift were posted to the social media site X (formerly Twitter). Some were viewed millions of times before they were removed.

At the time, Woodrow Hartzog, a professor at Boston University School of Law who studies privacy and technology law, told Billboard that the Swift deepfakes highlighted a “particularly toxic cocktail” that was bubbling up on social media in 2024: “It’s an existing problem, mixed with these new generative AI tools and a broader backslide in industry commitments to trust and safety.”

Then last month, Trump posted several AI-generated images to social media falsely suggesting Swift had endorsed him. Several showed women in t-shirts with the slogan “Swifties for Trump”; another showed Swift herself, dressed up as Uncle Sam alongside the message, “Taylor wants you to vote for Donald Trump.” Trump himself responded to the false endorsement: “I accept!”

At the time, experts told Billboard that Swift likely had grounds to file a lawsuit over Trump’s phony endorsement by citing her right of publicity — the legal power to control how your name, image and likeness are used by others.

But they also predicted — accurately, it turns out — that the star was better off fighting Trump’s fake endorsement with a legitimate endorsement of her own, broadcast across social media to her millions of die-hard fans: “I think Swift probably has more effective political rather than legal recourse here.”

Whether or not Swift’s endorsement has its intended effect, the next president will have a chance to shape federal policy on AI and deepfakes. Numerous bills aimed at regulating the cutting-edge tech are pending before Congress, including one that would create a federal right of publicity that would allow people like Swift to more easily sue over the unauthorized use of their likeness.

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Source: PlayStation / PS5 Pro
Sony’s worst-kept secret, the PS5 Pro, is officially here, and it’s sparking a social media discussion that the PlayStation 3 missed out on when it was first revealed.
During a very brief technical presentation, PS5 lead architect Mark Cerny proudly helped unveil the mid-gen refresh, which he boasts will give players the high frame rates they have been longing for on a console.
The PS5 Pro features a much larger GPU, improved Ray Tracing, and custom hardware for PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution. The companies take on machine learning.
The technical presentation confirmed the PS5 Pro leaks design-wise. It is a taller version of the latest PS5 Slim model, but it has three stripes on both sides of the console.
Via the PlayStation Blog, Hideaki Nishino, CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment’s Platform Business Group, broke down the console’s performance specs:

Upgraded GPU: With PS5 Pro, we are upgrading to a GPU that has 67% more Compute Units than the current PS5 console and 28% faster memory. Overall, this enables up to 45% faster rendering for gameplay, making the experience much smoother.
Advanced Ray Tracing: We’ve added even more powerful ray tracing that provides more dynamic reflection and refraction of light. This allows the rays to be cast at double, and at times triple, the speeds of the current PS5 console.
AI-Driven Upscaling: We’re also introducing PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution, an AI-driven upscaling that uses a machine learning-based technology to provide super sharp image clarity by adding an extraordinary amount of detail.

The PS5 Pro is also a disc-less console and includes a 2TB SSD, a DualSense wireless controller, and a copy of Astro’s Playroom pre-installed. The vertical stand is sold separately.
Source: PlayStation / PS5 Pro
These Games Will Be Enhanced For PS5 Pro
We also what games will be getting the “PS5 Pro Enhanced” designation, and they will be Alan Wake 2, Assassin’s Creed: Shadows, Demon’s Souls, Dragon’s Dogma 2, Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, Gran Turismo 7, Hogwarts Legacy, Horizon Forbidden West, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, The Crew Motorfest, The First Descendant, The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered, and more.

How Much Does It Cost?
As expected, the PS5 Pro won’t be cheap; it’s going to cost you a lot of money if you want to play with improved graphics and frame rates.
How much, you ask? The PS5 Pro will cost $699.99 / £699.99 / €799.99 / ¥119,980.
Well damn.
As you can imagine, the reactions to the price have many looking at PlayStation with a “you bugging” face and asking why they priced the console so high.
“The PS5 Pro has lines across the middle of the console which are a nod to the lines Sony executives were doing when they priced the thing,” one post on X, formerly Twitter, reads. 
Another user on X wrote, “YOU GUYS ARE SELLING THE DISC DRIVE SEPARATELY FOR A $700 DOLLAR CONSOLE!?!? WE HAVE TO PAY OVER $800 TO GET THE FULL PS5 PRO EXPERIENCE!?! THERE’S JUST NO WAY THEY THOUGHT THIS WAS OK!!!”
Some folks are defending the console’s price.
“Dudes who spent 1500$ on a graphics card are telling you that a more compelling ps5 with better hardware is not worth 6-700$,” a post on X read. 
Another post defending the console’s steep price reads, “Get yourself a PC if you got it like that. I just spent $423 on a CPU alone to fix a microcoding issue. Yet, $700 gaming console is just too bonkers for you – cmon now lol.”
Still ahead of the console’s November 7, 2024 release, the general consensus is PlayStation is bugging. You can see more reactions in the gallery below.

4. Peep this

5. Howling