---
id: "entity-michael-d-smith"
type: "entity"
source_timestamps: ["¶19"]
tags: ["author", "economist", "carnegie-mellon"]
related: ["entity-rahul-telang", "quote-killing-the-goose", "framework-rightsholder-defense", "framework-gen-ai-risk-mitigation"]
entityType: "person"
canonicalName: "Michael D. Smith"
aliases: ["Michael Smith"]
canonical_url: "heinz.cmu.edu"
speakers: ["Michael D. Smith"]
sources: ["tail2"]
isSpeakerEntity: true
---
## Segment 2 — tail2

## Article 126 — a126

# Michael D. Smith

**Co-author of the source article** "Can Gen AI and Copyright Coexist?" (Harvard Business Review, July 2025).

**Profile:** A professor of information technology and marketing at Carnegie Mellon University's Heinz College and a long-time researcher of the digital-entertainment economy, digital piracy, and data-driven media strategy (co-author, with [[entity-rahul-telang]], of books including *Streaming, Sharing, Stealing* and *The Digital Rebellion*).

**Role in this source:** primary author/analytical voice. He (with Telang) frames the thesis that generative AI's reliance on unlicensed/pirated data is on an unsustainable collision course with the ~$1.8T creative economy (see [[claim-creative-industry-gdp]]), and prescribes the strategic responses.

**Attributed contributions in this vault:** the "killing the goose" framing (see [[quote-killing-the-goose]]); the [[framework-rightsholder-defense]]; the [[framework-gen-ai-risk-mitigation]]; and the overall argument threading [[concept-fair-use-divergence]], [[concept-piracy-caveat]], and [[claim-unlicensed-data-performance]].