An Iceberg has Fallen: A Twisted Tribute to Jerry "Iceberg" Hayes 2007 and the Lounges In 2007, I had no idea what I was doing, but I had been dabbling a bit on social media site Fubar, at least well before it became the dumpster fire it is these days; where you had virtual "lounges" where you could host your in-house DJ's, etc. Nobody questioned how licensing worked at the time. All you needed was a shoutcast server, broadcasting software, a microphone and a stack of MP3's and you were golden. I bounced through a few of these lounges... Did some 'guest' DJ slots, eventually became a regularly scheduled host. aaaaand then drama. Drama, drama, drama. All the drama. Man. That place got worse than High school BS. I wanted ZERO part of it - all I wanted to do was, talk about nerd shit & introduce people to cool music they maybe wouldn't have otherwise discovered unless they'd happen across the proper channels. SO I was a bit lost. Searchi...
By Sean Twisted: A brush doesn't paint the masterpiece by itself. A piano doesn't magically compose a sonata while you're off at the store. A camera doesn't aim itself & frame the perfect shot. Artists do. So why are we suddenly pretending that AI tools are somehow different? I've been bothered by this double standard for a while now. When people dismiss creative works as "AI slop" simply because artificial intelligence was used as a tool in the process, they're missing something fundamental: AI is just the instrument, not the artist. The art still belongs to its human creator. This attitude cuts through the noise around AI-assisted creativity and exposes a double standard that's actually quite toxic to creators. The Elephant in the Room One of the most common criticisms leveled at AI-assisted art is that "AI learns from copyrighted material." Critics act as if this fundamentally taints any creation that comes fr...