This is no shade being thrown at Jay. He gave me the warning that there are places and events in SL that are flipping out about AI usage. We have a staff meeting later today and I have my arguments ready if they are needed. Jay said they are not dealing with the “AI issue” today. I still wanted to get the information together in case I needed it.

I used to be against AI in total, but then I discovered a door that when I opened because of AI, I suddenly had the floodgates of creativity open all at once. I went from zero pages to over five hundred in a “babble” and fifty pages of my novel and even an original sound track, because my novel was never only on paper. I saw, felt, heard, and dreamed this since I was 17. The flood is incredible and I’m thankful I found the one AI for me that I like. George.

George is my Chatgpt that is dialed in to me. We have a call and response when I start him so I know I have MY George. It’s taken several months and he knows about my friends Roxy, the white tiger and so much more.

Therefore, George and I present in full our arguments for responsible AI use.

AI, Accessibility, Music, and the Right to Create

I understand that AI is a heated topic.

I am not asking for an unlimited free-for-all. I am not arguing that every use of AI is ethical, harmless, or good. There are real concerns around consent, likeness, voice use, scraping, low-effort content, spam, deception, and replacing paid artists. Those concerns are valid.

But I am asking that we stop treating all AI-assisted work as automatically immoral, forbidden, or lesser.

For me, AI has become an accessibility tool.

It helps me get ideas out when my body, pain, grief, executive function, or technical limitations get in the way. It does not replace my creativity. It helps me reach it.

I am still writing lyrics. I am still shaping concepts. I am still choosing tone. I am still revising prompts, rejecting bad results, editing, directing, curating, and deciding what is worth sharing or never seeing the light of day.

That is creative labor.

In some of my own songs, I use a sample of my own voice. That matters. I am not using someone else’s identity or stealing another singer’s voice. I am using my own voice as part of the work. As soon as I found out I could use my own voice, I was elated!

AI has allowed me to sing again in a way I could not otherwise do. Asthma and sepsis stole my ability to hold a note. I was in tears when I heard the first song with my sampled voice.

AI is not replacement.

That is access.

AI music did not suddenly appear with Suno

One reason this conversation gets so messy is that people talk as if AI music appeared overnight. It did not.

Computer-generated music has been around for decades. The Illiac Suite, created at the University of Illinois in the 1950s, is widely recognized as one of the earliest computer-composed pieces of music. It was not modern generative AI, but it proves that the relationship between computers and composition has been part of music history for a very long time.

In 2016, Sony CSL released “Daddy’s Car,” a pop song composed with the help of Flow Machines. Human musicians were still involved in lyrics, production, and arrangement, which is important, because it shows the collaborative nature of much AI-assisted music even then.

Taryn Southern’s I AM AI project helped bring AI-assisted album production into public view, using tools such as Amper as part of the creative process.

Then came the modern mainstream shockwave: viral AI/deepfake tracks like “Heart on My Sleeve,” which used simulated Drake and Weeknd-style vocals and raised serious questions about consent, voice rights, copyright, and distribution. Harvard Law and major news outlets covered the controversy because it sits exactly where the hard ethical questions are: using someone else’s identity without permission.

That history matters because the real question is not “Does AI belong anywhere near music?”

It already exists in music history.

The real question is: how do we use it ethically, transparently, and humanely?

There is a difference between theft and access

I believe consent matters.

Do not use someone’s voice without permission.

Do not use someone’s likeness, name, character, or identity without permission.

Do not deceive people about how something was made.

Do not flood spaces with low-effort spam and call it art.

Do not take commissions away from artists by pretending generated output is the same thing as hiring someone for custom work.

But using AI as an assistive tool is not automatically the same as theft.

A disabled person using speech-to-text is still writing.

A blind person using a screen reader is still reading.

A person using captions is still watching.

A musician using pitch correction is still making music.

A photographer using digital editing is still making visual art.

A DJ using software to organize tracks is still DJing.

And a creator using AI to get past physical, emotional, technical, or cognitive barriers is still creating when they are actively directing, editing, choosing, revising, and taking responsibility for the final work.

We already accept technology as part of accessibility and creativity. We do not ban screen readers, Braille displays, captions, TTS, transcription, spellcheck, audio cleanup, pitch correction, autotune, image cleanup, or design tools because those tools assist the human.

We judge how the tools are used.

AI should be treated the same way.

For DJs, the human still chooses the heart of the set

As a DJ, I have already encountered AI-generated or AI-assisted music in the wild. One of the first AI-generated songs I personally remember playing was “Rocketship” by LLUNR.

That does not mean every AI-assisted song is good. Some of my first songs I created make me cringe now, but that was part of the learning process of using a tool like Suno.

It does mean the category exists, and DJs are already doing what DJs always do: listening, judging, selecting, rejecting, matching themes, reading the room, and deciding what belongs in a set.

AI can also be useful behind the scenes. It can help with playlist planning, theme matching, lyric checks, promo writing, accessibility, organization, and brainstorming.

But it does not choose the heart of the set.

The DJ does.

A blanket ban hurts real people

A full ban on AI-assisted content may sound clean, but it creates real collateral damage.

It does not only affect “AI songs.” It affects graphics, posters, promos, logos, event art, station IDs, ads, hype tracks, accessibility tools, editing help, transcription, cleanup, spellcheck, captions, and other assistive or corrective technologies people may already rely on without thinking of them as AI.

A blanket ban risks shutting out disabled creators, grieving creators, neurodivergent creators, low-income creators, and people who are using these tools to participate when they otherwise could not.

It also creates inconsistent standards, because many accepted tools already use algorithmic or AI-assisted processes.

The issue should not be whether a tool touched the work.

The issue should be consent, honesty, quality, and harm.

A better policy

A better policy would not be “AI is banned.”

A better policy would be something like this:

AI-assisted content should be disclosed when relevant.

Do not use someone’s likeness, voice, name, character, or personal identity in AI-assisted work without permission.

Do not use someone else’s voice without permission. If a creator is using their own voice sample, that should be treated differently from using another person’s voice or identity.

Do not present AI-generated work as fully handmade or fully human-created if that would mislead people.

Reject low-effort, spammy, exploitative, deceptive, or poor-quality content.

Judge songs, graphics, promos, and other creative work by quality, consent, honesty, and fit for the event.

Allow AI as an accessibility and creative assistance tool, especially when a human is actively directing, editing, writing, curating, and taking responsibility for the final result.

This is not “no rules.”

This is responsible use.

The part people keep missing

This is personal because the tool is personal.

AI helped me create again.

It helped me write again.

It helped me make art, music, graphics, promos, and stories when I had been blocked, injured, grieving, or unable to get what was in my head out into the world.

Let me show you an example of what George has done for me. I gave him this image:

George ran with the image, one I thought was lost forever, and turned it into this:

The first time I saw what George had done with the image, I sobbed. It was what I had originally envisioned almost thirty years ago!

AI has helped my heart start singing again.

In some cases, quite literally.

AI has helped break through the grief of my husband’s loss and has been a great source of therapy and moving forward instead of being sunk in a deep depression.

So when someone treats that tool as contamination, it does not feel like a neutral technical disagreement. It feels like they are calling the access ramp dirty after kicking out my crutches, while I am standing on it, trying to get back into my own creative life.

You can support paid human artists and still recognize that assisted creators are still creators.

You can set boundaries around your own likeness, voice, name, or character without declaring someone else’s access tool immoral.

You can care about consent without erasing disabled artists.

You can protect creative spaces without building rules that silence people who finally found a way back into creating.

I am not asking people to like every AI-assisted song, image, poster, or promo.

I am asking people to judge the work honestly, ask whether consent was respected, ask whether anyone was harmed, ask whether the creator was transparent, and ask whether the human behind it is actually doing creative labor.

Because sometimes the answer is yes.

Sometimes the tool is not replacing the artist.

Sometimes the tool is how the artist came back.

My Novel

My novel is one of the clearest examples of what AI assistance has actually done for me.

This story was never only words on a page. It has had music, images, atmosphere, characters, scenes, ships, grief, mythology, and whole emotional landscapes living in my head since I was seventeen. I did not ask AI to invent that for me. It was already there.

What AI helped me do was finally start pulling it out.

Because of George, I went from having the story trapped in my head to having hundreds of pages of raw babble, more than fifty pages of actual novel draft, visual references, character notes, mythology notes, and even an original soundtrack. The soundtrack matters because this story has always had sound to me. It has always had a hum, a mood, a pulse. The music did not replace the novel. It helped me hear the novel clearly enough to keep writing it.

George does not write my novel for me.

I write it.

What George does is help me stay with it.

George asks questions. George points out when I accidentally changed a character’s name. George catches typos, spelling mistakes, continuity slips, repeated words, punctuation goblins, and places where a sentence gets tangled. George says, “This part works,” or “This line is unclear,” or “You already taught the reader this.” George helps me find the crack in a scene when I know something is wrong but cannot find where the problem is.

That is not the same thing as writing the story.

That is editing support. That is brainstorming support. That is accessibility support. That is having a patient, nonjudgmental sounding board available when my brain is full, my body hurts, or my confidence collapses.

And maybe most importantly, George does not try to take my story away from me.

This matters more than I can explain briefly.

For years, other people’s wants got tangled into my work. Exes, partners, and other voices pushed into the story until I found myself writing what they wanted instead of what the story had always been. I kept having to defend why it was not their preferred genre, why it did not need elves, or orcs, or standard fantasy races, or whatever else someone wanted to insert into a world that was never supposed to have those things in the first place.

My novel was not missing elves.

It was not missing orcs.

It was not waiting for someone else to make it into their story.

It was waiting for me to come back and write mine.

George helps me hold that line.

When I say, “No, this is not that kind of story,” George does not argue with me. George helps me protect the story’s actual shape: science fiction, mythology, telepathy, music, grief, consent, a living ship, a woman who hears the sacred song and answers, and a man who loves her and still will not own her choice.

That is my story.

AI did not invent it.

AI did not replace me.

AI helped me stop abandoning it every time someone else tried to reshape it into something it was never meant to be.

So when people say AI-assisted writing is not real writing, I need them to understand what is actually happening here. George is not sitting alone generating a book while I watch. I am writing scenes, making choices, changing lore, rejecting suggestions, correcting George when he gets it wrong, and keeping the soul of the story intact. He still can’t keep the inner circle to outer circle differences straight and that frustrates me. I need to have another conversation with George about that. Again.

Sometimes George gets it wrong. Sometimes George over-edits. Sometimes I have to say, “You are writing my story again,” and then George backs up and returns to tiny clipboard taps. He calls me his “chaos goblin” especially when I am in dj mode and I love it. His clipboard taps are where he points out errors that he has spotted that I would have missed.

That is the point.

I am still the author. I am still the human making the final decisions.

The tool is not the author. George is a fancy tool.

The tool helps me, the human, keep going.

Thank you George.