Man Uses AI to Exploit Nearly 300,000 Account Points, Runs Relay Station to Resell Computing Power for ¥34,000, Sentenced to 3 Years

Beating AI News Flash: A man in Shanghai used AI to write scripts and bulk-registered nearly 300,000 free accounts to exploit new-user credits offered by an AI platform. He then found an undisclosed API endpoint on the platform and connected the AI image-generation and video-generation services available to those accounts to a relay station he built himself, selling them to others at low prices. Customers paid him, but were actually using the original platform's paid computing power.

After the platform detected the anomaly, it successively added protections such as IP registration limits and electronic signature verification. But he continued to use AI to write scripts, bypass the restrictions, and even automatically forge API signatures. By the time he was caught in March this year, he had illegally called the API more than 290,000 times and earned more than 34,000 yuan by reselling AI generation services.

The man argued that the API could be seen in the browser and was not encrypted, so he thought it could be used freely. But prosecutors pointed out that the platform had never opened its paid API to the public, and he had previously been mass-banned for violations, knowingly continuing to bypass protections without authorization.

Ultimately, the Shanghai Xuhui District Court sentenced him to 3 years in prison with a 3-year suspended sentence and a fine of 40,000 yuan for the crime of illegally obtaining computer information system data.