Chris Campbell:

Fraudster Jailed for Using 10K Bots and AI Songs to Outstream Taylor Swift

After pleading guilty, a 54-year-old North Carolina man, Michael Smith, was sentenced to 18 months in prison for using artificial intelligence to generate songs for a scheme that stole millions from music streaming platforms.

In a press release Tuesday, the U.S. Department of Justice said that Smith is the first American criminally charged with AI-assisted streaming fraud.

Starting in 2017, Smith began using fake email accounts and "fraudulently obtained debit cards" to create "thousands of fraudulent accounts" on services including Amazon Music, Apple Music, Spotify, and YouTube Music. He then employed software that pushed the bots to continuously stream songs that he claimed to own, which the DOJ said were AI-generated.

By his arrest in 2024, he had created "hundreds of thousands of AI-generated songs," then dispersed billions of automated streams among them so that the bots could avoid raising any red flags by all targeting the same song at once.

All together, the fake songs generated substantially more streams than some of the most popular artists today. According to the DOJ, in a glaring example from April 2023, Smith's fake songs were fraudulently streamed 80.9 million times during that month, while Taylor Swift's entire catalog only got 9.3 million streams during the same time period.

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James Altucher:

"Software Is Over": Developer Uses AI To Build Free Adobe Clones After Frustration With Cancellation Fees

Adobe, a company that was once sued by the U.S. government over its early cancellation fees, has seen plenty of customers abandon its products in favor of free alternatives. One developer has even used AI-powered reverse engineering to create a suite of tools intended to replicate Adobe's apps, leading him to declare that "software is over."

Developer Brandon Thomas says he used Anthropic's Claude Opus 5.5 to build the replacements in Rust. Photocraft imitates Photoshop, while Vectorcraft and Filmcraft take on Illustrator and Premiere. Lightcraft, Effectcraft, Designcraft, and Printcraft are the alternatives to Lightroom, After Effects, InDesign, and Acrobat Pro, respectively.

The apps are open source and free, with no subscription required. Users can download the source code, modify it, and contribute fixes. Thomas describes himself as a software industry veteran with 15 years of experience, including roughly a decade working with Rust. He also insists the project has team support and will not be abandoned after launch.

For now, the software remains at an early stage, and commenters have reported problems with basic functionality. They might look like Adobe's apps, but it doesn't sound like they're able to replace the long-established programs just yet.

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Davis Wilson:

RKLB Is a BUY!

Blue Origin just raised money at a $130 billion valuation. Rocket Lab's market capitalization is under $50 billion. Think about that.

Rocket Lab is the company with the longer orbital launch history (80 successful orbital launches versus three for Blue Origin). Rocket Lab also has the proven deep-space track record, the diversified business model, and recurring revenue.

Yet it trades at a fraction of the valuation.

That doesn't mean Blue Origin is a bad company. Not at all! It's just that Rocket Lab has already delivered much of what investors hope Blue Origin can deliver in the years to come.

Yet the market values it dramatically lower. That's why I continue to believe Rocket Lab (RKLB) remains one of the most compelling investments in the commercial space industry.

Sometimes the best investment isn't the company making the biggest promises. It's the one quietly delivering the biggest results.

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