Patrick T. Ayers
March 31, 1963-June 9, 2025

It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of our brother, Patrick T. Ayers. Pat was born and raised in Eureka, and he was the youngest of 12 children born to Ernest G. “Gerry” Ayers and Oriel Ayers. Pat was 62 years old.

After graduating from Eureka High School, Pat served in the U.S. Air Force for 3 years. He served as a Security Specialist and after graduating from Special Operations Technical School, Pat was awarded the Special Operations badge and also earned his beret.

Pat worked as a young boy for his father’s food products distribution company alongside his older brothers. Pat later took an interest in working as a chef at local restaurants, including Roy’s Club, Sea Grill, Mazzotti’s, and St. Vincent de Paul’s Dining Facility.

Pat grew up spending summers at the Ayers Mattole House on what was then called Squaw Creek. Pat loved fishing, being in nature, and exploring the Mattole River with the Liu brothers. Pat had a love of exploration that he was able to do during those summers at the cabin.

In 2016, Pat was diagnosed with Myotonic Dystrophy Type 1, experiencing moderate to advanced weakness in both his upper and lower extremities.

Pat passed away at San Francisco VA Hospital (SFVAH) with his brother Paul by his side, while listening to Pink Floyd. Pat had been hospitalized at SFVAH since March 2025 because of increased weakness and numerous side effects of his diagnosis of Myotonic Dystrophy.

The family would like to extend our heartfelt gratitude to the Eureka VA Clinic staff and the San Francisco VA Hospital for their compassionate care of Pat, and working with Pat’s siblings to keep him comfortable. We will miss Pat’s smile, his stories, his knowledge, and his unwavering sense of humor. Pat was preceded in death by his parents, Gerry and Oriel Ayers, his brother David, his nephew Kyle, and his great nephew Fischer.

Pat is survived by his siblings: Michael (Karen), Melinda (Norman), Eileen, Liz, Phil (Jani), Paul (Nancy), Maureen (Mike), Catherine (Matt), Tim (Lisa), and Anne (Steve); 23 nieces and nephews; 32 great nieces and nephews; and numerous cousins from the Ayers, McGaraghan, and Poscic families.

Please join Pat’s family for a Celebration of Life on Saturday, September 20, 2025, from 1:00-4:00, at Old Growth Cellars, 1945 Hilfiker Lane, Eureka.

Donations can be made to St. Vincent de Paul in Honor of Gerry/Oriel Ayers. The check should be written as follows.

• Check made out to: Humboldt Area Foundation (HAF)
• Mail to: 363 Indianola Road, Bayside, CA, 95524
• Memo line: St. Vincent de Paul in Honor of Gerry/Oriel Ayers

This information is necessary so that your donation is applied to the proper account. Thank you.

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PREVIOUSLY

• Multiple Humboldt County Schools Placed on Lockdown Due to Threats
• LOCKDOWNS UPDATE: Out-of-State Man Identified as Suspect Believed to Have Made Threatening Calls to Multiple Humboldt Schools and Businesses
• Extradition Arrest Warrant Issued for Out-of-State Asshole Who Keeps Threatening Local Schools
• ALLEGED ASSHOLE IN CUFFS! 31-Year-Old Oklahoma Resident Arrested on Multiple Felony Counts for Making ‘Terrorist Threats’ to Local Schools
• Trial of Man Charged With Making Terrorist Threats to Local Schools Delayed to Evaluate His Competency

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WARNING: This story contains quoted testimony that includes strong language (aka “swear words”) and threats of violence to children.

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Daryl Ray Jones, the Oklahoma man accused of terrorizing multiple Humboldt County school communities through a series of threatening phone calls earlier this year, appeared in court today for a preliminary hearing.

With Deputy District Attorney Roger Rees prosecuting the case and Conflict Council Supervising Attorney Meagan O’Connell representing Jones, the hearing took place in Courtroom 4, where two local law enforcement officers took the stand to recount responding to the barrage of threats, which began on Feb. 27 with a call to the California Conservation Corps (CCC) office in Fortuna.

On the witness stand, California Highway Patrol Officer Travis Sarvinski testified that a CCC employee named Raquel Ortega called 911 after receiving multiple calls that day from a man unknown to her who threatened to come down and kill her specifically.

Another employee in the office, Deborah Nelson, spoke to the caller as well and heard him say, “Kill Raquel, bitch” and “I’mma kill you too, bitch,” according to Sarvinksi.

Nelson and Ortega received more threatening calls from the man on Feb. 28, March 7 and March 18, Sarvinksi testified. Reading from his own police reports, the officer said that during one such call the male voice said, “You know I’m planning on coming up there and killing all y’all motherfuckers” and, later, “Call the cops, bitch. Y’all dead.” 

Sarvinski said he authored a search warrant for phone records and found that the phone number from which the calls were made matched one that had been provided by the Arcata Police Department in connection to other threatening phone calls.

The caller had made reference to showing up in a red pickup or coupe, and a red 2000 Nissan Frontier parked near the CCC office was found to be registered in Jones’s name, Sarvinski said. Employees searched a database and found that Jones had worked for the CCC until 2017.

Next on the stand was Ryan Flowers, a former Eureka Police Department officer (where he served as school resource officer for one year) who is now employed by the Cal Poly Humboldt Police Department. Flowers testified that in March he responded to a series of threatening phone calls that led to lockdowns at Eureka High School, Alder Grove Charter School, Sweet Peas Learning Center, Little Saplings Preschool and Grant Elementary School. 

Secretaries at each of these schools were scared by the threats, which referenced plans to shoot up the schools, kidnap children and murder kids and employees, according to Flowers.

Periodically during the witnesses’ testimony, O’Connell lodged objections about Rees’s questions, sometimes challenging whether he had sufficient foundation, other times accusing him of leading the witnesses. Judge Canning sustained a few of these objections but allowed much of the testimony to proceed. During her cross-examination, O’Connell sought to cast doubt on the identify of the caller.

The start of this morning’s hearing was delayed a bit by a request from regular court reporter John Chiv to take photographs during the proceedings. O’Connell objected, accusing Chiv of being biased and questioning whether he should even be considered media. But Judge Canning ruled that he does meet the state’s definition of media, and he granted the request for photography, though only after calling a recess and allowing Jones to change out of his bright orange inmate jumpsuit and into dress clothes that O’Connell had retrieved from her office.

The trial of Jones has been delayed by questions regarding his competency to stand trial. This preliminary hearing, which is intended to lay the foundation for a jury trial, is scheduled to continue Tuesday morning at 9:15.

Press release from Open Door Community Health Centers:

Delta Dental’s Community Care Foundation has awarded a grant of $80,000 to Open Door Community Health Centers to support the expansion of dental services at Burre Dental Center, in Eureka. Remodeling is due for completion in August 2025.

In its award statement, Delta’s Community Care Foundation noted Open Door’s “dedication to providing quality, affordable oral healthcare.” Open Door is committed to investing in oral healthcare services for Humboldt County.

Each year Burre Dental Center in Eureka sees over 7,000 of Open Door’s 12,158 dental patients; about 1,500 of these are emergency dental visits for adults who do not have an established dental provider.

Burre Dental Center’s renovation and expansion will allow for 8,000 more visits each year, is particularly focusing on seniors who have been suffering from a lack of access to oral healthcare services.

Over the next two years, a new program which will visit senior living facilities and resource centers to provide oral health hygiene education, to help seniors improve their oral healthcare and reduce fear of seeking dental care. The program will also provide dental care options and resources for seniors without a dental provider.

“Apart from the extra space and access to care at Burre [Dental Center],” says Tory Starr, Open Door’s CEO, “this funding allows us to expand our Dental Residency Program at last (bringing new dental providers to our community), and it will integrate behavioral health services onsite which we know can be a barrier for patients in accessing dental care.”

The Burre Dental Center expansion adds 6 new dental operatories, bringing it to a total of 22 operatories. The expansion will also allow Open Door to hire two more dentists and train an additional dental resident each year.

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This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.

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Committees in both houses of the California Legislature will decide this week whether more than half a dozen bills that seek to protect people from AI will move on to final votes.

One closely watched bill before the Assembly appropriations committee, Senate Bill 7, would require employers to give workers 30 days notice before they use AI to make decisions related to employment such as compensation, hiring, firing, or promotions. It would also give workers the right to appeal decisions made by AI and prevent employers from making predictions about a worker related to their immigration status, ancestral history, health, or psychological state.

A recent audit of algorithmic management tools sold to companies suggests that many use AI to determine pay, a trend that started among gig workers nearly a decade ago that researchers say is now becoming widespread. Tests have found that AI that sifts through resumes can disqualify or downgrade a job applicant for arbitrary reasons like race or sex or because they’re wearing glasses. Inferences based on brain data, which can reveal a person’s health or the words or images they form in their mind, would also be prohibited under the legislation, which will be considered in a hearing scheduled for Friday, Aug. 29.

SB 7 is one of a trio of bills supported by the California Federation of Labor Unions, AFL-CIO, this year that attempt to regulate automated systems in the workplace. The federation represents more than two million workers statewide and made more than $2.1 million in political donations to Assembly and Senate members last year, according to the CalMatters Digital Democracy database.

The other two bills, Assembly Bill 1331 and AB 1221 both involve regulating workplace surveillance.

Federation president Lorena Gonzalez told CalMatters that employers shouldn’t be allowed to predict if you’re pregnant or what you think about your employer or boss and use that information against you.“We have to set up guardrails against every kind of surveillance and AI tool to ensure that workers have the privacy and respect and autonomy that they deserve,” said Gonzalez, who continues to work with labor unions in other states to prevent AI from harming frontline workers.

A race to use AI?

Sen. Jerry McNerney, the bill’s author, said there seems to be a race to use AI to displace workers or squeeze more efficiency out of them.

The Stockton Democrat told the audience at a CalMatters event last month in San Francisco that “there’s tremendous opportunity for productivity, for making people more comfortable and safe, but your imagination can run wild with what can go wrong here.”

In response to questions about criticism that SB 7 will drive costs up, McNerney told CalMatters in a statement that he plans to introduce amendments that will substantially reduce the cost of implementing the bill, including the elimination of a process for workers to appeal decisions made by AI, a major point of contention for business groups like the California Chamber of Commerce.

SB 7 is one of a number of bills on what is known as the suspense calendar. Each year, hundreds of bills with a price tag above $50,000 are added to the calendar. Appropriation committees in the Assembly and Senate then have the power to designate some bills as too expensive or otherwise use cost to justify holding or effectively killing the legislation. Roughly two out of three bills make it from the suspense calendar to a final vote on the floor of the California Assembly or Senate, but the fact that this process happens with little debate and out of public view has led some to call it undemocratic and corrupt.

Making sure private companies comply with SB 7 could cost the state $600,000 or more, according to an assembly appropriations committee staff analysis released last week. But the cost for the state’s own agencies to comply is unknown, because the state doesn’t know how many automated employment systems it uses. Earlier this year the California Department of Technology allowed state agencies to self report use of high-risk automated systems like those used in employment. Nearly 200 state agencies reported no use of such technology despite the fact that state agencies are currently using or have used high risk automated systems in the past.

Cost barrier

The cost of compliance or enforcement has stalled AI employment regulation before. Last month, the California Privacy Protection Agency bowed to pressure by lawmakers, business groups, and Governor Newsom and voted to weaken its own automated decisionmaking technology rules.

In the other chamber of the California Legislature, the California Senate Appropriations Committee is preparing to decide the fate of another bill, Assembly Bill 1018, which would require testing before use of automated systems that make consequential decisions about employment, education, housing, health care, financial services, and parts of the criminal justice system. That bill would give people the right to appeal an automated decision within 30 days. An analysis by committee staff found that if the bill passes it could cost local agencies, state agencies, and the state judiciary branch hundreds of millions of dollars.

In a statement shared with CalMatters, Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan said she has no plan to make amendments to the draft bill but that she’s committed to bringing down costs wherever it makes sense to do so.

“I will admit to being surprised by the Senate Appropriations estimates, considering CalMatters’ prior reporting that automated decision-making systems use was not widespread at the state level. So I’m working to better understand the cost estimates so I can respond to them appropriately,” she said.

Last year a similar version of the bill was pulled by Bauer-Kahan, a Democrat from San Ramon, after amendments limited its provisions to assessing employment. That bill attracted opposition from big tech companies but also a range of nearly 100 companies including Blue Shield of California, dating app company Bumble, biotech company Genentech, and pharmaceutical company Pfizer.

Nearly 80 businesses or groups oppose the bill, including the California Hospital Association and major health care providers like Kaiser Permanente. The advocacy group California Life Sciences argues that passage could lead providers to pass on higher costs to patients, while the California Credit Union League argues that compliance with the bill will slow innovation, an outcome that led Governor Newsom to veto a major piece of AI legislation last year.

Both bills were authored by California lawmakers with extensive histories of regulating AI. McNerney previously served as co-chair of an AI subcommittee in Congress. As chair of the assembly privacy and consumer protection committee, Bauer-Kahan is one of the most powerful regulators of AI in California, and was one of the first lawmakers nationwide who attempted to enshrine the Biden administration’s AI Bill of Rights into state law.

Partly because of the price tag for businesses that deploy AI, the California Privacy Protection Agency acted against the wishes of unions, digital rights, and privacy groups and voted last month to weaken its own draft rules to regulate how businesses use automated decisionmaking technology. Conversely, the California Civil Rights Department finalized rules to protect workers from automated discrimination during recruitment, hiring, and promotion processes. Those rules go into effect in October. The principle that people deserve the right to know when AI makes an important decision about their lives and to appeal if they think AI got it wrong were popularized by Biden’s AI Bill of Rights.

Survey reveals concerns

A survey of 1,400 California adults released this week by TechEquity, a supporter of AB 1018, found that more people are concerned than excited about AI; that nearly six in 10 believe the benefits of AI will accrue to the wealthy instead of the middle class; and that 70 percent want the government to adopt laws to protect people from harm.

Peter Leroe-Muñoz, general counsel for the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, a business organization with members like Apple, Google, and Microsoft, said the group supports responsible AI innovation. Still, he added, the costs of audits, training, staffing, disclosures, data retention, and potential lawsuits may ultimately undermine a lot of the services that businesses provide today at a reasonable cost.

“That becomes an additional financial burden in this more uncertain time that really becomes a drag on innovation, a higher cost not only for businesses and consumers but counties and other local municipal governments,” he said.

Passing bills that force employees to notify workers if they use AI to determine things like compensation is a critical first step, said Veena Dubal, a coauthor of the study released last week and an outspoken critic of AI that harms workers to enrich tech companies. Because people don’t know this tech is in use today, she hopes that notifying people increases public knowledge, and that leads to a ban of algorithms that determine how much people get paid.

To those who say the cost of implementing these bills is too high, she warns that algorithms are already influencing how much money people make, and that cost gets passed down to taxpayers. Algorithms can also locate union organizers, automate discrimination, or terminate people who managers decide they don’t like.

“These all have extraneous costs on society, extraordinary costs,” she said. “Workers, voters, taxpayers, we should all have a say in the kind of world that these companies are creating with the disproportionate power that they hold.”

If these bills don’t pass, Dubal said, it’s a signal that AI regulation has stalled in California.

“As much as Gov. Newsom wants to juxtapose himself against Donald Trump and California wants to be a sort of savior to the rest of the nation in this moment of extreme right authoritarian actions,” Dubal said, “it’s really important that the state not continue to concede to big tech companies who are very much in bed with the president.”

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From the Eureka Police Department:

On Saturday, August 23rd at approximately 7:51 pm, Eureka Police Department and Humboldt Bay Fire were dispatched to a vehicle on fire on the lawn of the Humboldt County Courthouse.

A 69-year old male drove his white 4-door sedan onto the lawn in front of the Courthouse building on the 800 block of 5th Street and lit his vehicle on fire. The subject was arrested immediately. No one was injured.

This is an on-going investigation. If you have any information  regarding this incident, please contact EPD’s Criminal Investigations Unit (CIU) at 707-441-4300.

Press release from the Eureka Police Department:

On August 23, 2025, at approximately 1:18 p.m., an officer with the Eureka Police Department observed a gold Chevrolet Malibu collide with a parked vehicle in the 3100 block of Glen Street. The driver fled the scene, and when the officer attempted a traffic stop, the driver failed to yield, initiating a pursuit.

The pursuit traveled eastbound on W. Harris Street and continued onto Myrtle Avenue toward Old Arcata Road. During the pursuit, an officer successfully deployed a spike strip, causing the suspect vehicle’s tires to deflate and eventually come off. The driver was also seen discarding items from the vehicle while fleeing.

The pursuit concluded at the end of Pamala Lane, where the suspect fled on foot. A Eureka Police Department K-9 officer and his partner K-9 Odin apprehended the suspect without further incident. The driver was identified as 37-year-old Perry Dale Sanderson of Hoopa.

Sanderson was booked into the Humboldt County Correctional Facility on the following charges:

• CVC 2800.4 – Evading a Peace Officer, Driving Opposite of Traffic
• CVC 2800.2 – Felony Evading a Peace Officer
• PC 207(a) – Kidnapping
• PC 236 – False Imprisonment
• PC 3455(a) – Violation of Post Release Community Supervision
• PC 1203.2(a) – Probation Violation
• CVC 14601(a) – Driving with a Suspended License
• CVC 20002(a) – Hit and Run

No officers or members of the public were injured during the incident. The investigation is ongoing, and anyone with additional information is encouraged to contact the Eureka Police Department.

The Eureka Police Department would like to thank the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office and the California Highway Patrol for their assistance.

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Local production company owner Tex Kelly is well aware that some people disapprove of the generative AI technology he’s been using to make commercials for local businesses. He specifically recalls some negative comments he saw on Reddit, like this one, posted last month in response to a video ad he produced for Eureka Mexican restaurant Esmeralda’s 2.0:

“I loathe all of the AI bullshit that local businesses are using for ads. If you can’t do it in house, pay an artist.”

The comment had 54 up-votes, making it the top response to a post seeking opinions on the ad. 

“There’s always a bit of worry about harsh feedback … ,” Kelly acknowledged in a recent interview. “We’ll see an ‘AI slop’ comment every once in a while. But the majority of feedback has been really, really good.” [Disclosure: Kelly used to work for the Outpost’s parent company, Lost Coast Communications.]

When it comes to his own justification for embracing the technology, it’s pretty simple.

“I like it,” he said. 

More to the point, some of his clients like it. A couple of local business owners have specifically requested the use AI in their commercials because of the attention-grabbing imagery it can create, Kelly said.

Here’s that Esmeralda’s ad, which has been fairly ubiquitous on YouTube, social media and TV:

Kelly explained that recent advancements in generative AI — specifically Google’s VO3 program — allowed him to put computer-generated creatures into real-life local environments he’d photographed. Hence, he was able to “film” Bigfoot breaking out of Redwood Capital Bank (whose name he changed to avoid legal repercussions) and a Yeti flying a helicopter over real aerial views of Eureka.

He’s aware that the results aren’t perfect. (“It was supposed to be Bigfoot, which … Reddit users have said it obviously looks like a gorilla,” he said.) But the ad has made an impression and gotten a lot of people talking, which is one important measure of success in advertising.

“We’re always trying to do something that’s different to get people’s attention,” Kelly said.

That’s not sufficient justification for using AI, according to other locals who work in video production. AI imagery is inherently dishonest, they argue, and its use is actively depriving creative professionals of work.

Justin Grimaldo, a local editor and filmmaker, recently took to Facebook to make his opinion known.

“These aren’t just goofy experiments,” he wrote regarding local ads that employ AI. “Businesses are actually using this stuff in place of real video work—and it’s already pushing out talented local filmmakers and photographers.”

Grimaldo also feels that AI ads are often deceptive. He cited AI-generated real estate video tours and AI-enhanced images of restaurant interiors as examples of misleading consumers.

“Sure, you saved a few bucks today,” his post continued. “But long-term? You’re training your customers not to trust you. You’re also telling local creatives their work doesn’t matter—and that’s not just lazy, it’s a terrible investment in your brand.”

Reached by the Outpost, Grimaldo said he’s not against progress or new technology so much as he’s pro-transparency and human creativity. He thinks AI ads should be labeled as such, and he sees generative AI programs as a poor substitute for hard work and imagination.

“It’s one thing to use AI as a tool to enhance a human-driven vision, but it’s another to slap a few prompts into a generator and call it a day,” he said. “That’s not creative. That’s outsourcing imagination.”

Grimaldo is also not impressed with a lot of what AI generates. The technology is notoriously bad at rendering human hands, for example, and Grimaldo says it also has trouble making mouths and eyes move in realistic, organic-looking ways.

“AI still struggles with the subtleties of human expression, which makes a huge difference in storytelling … ,” he said. “[I]t’s missing soul. [AI imagery] mimics emotion but doesn’t generate it. … That said … give it a couple years. The tech is moving fast, and there’s no stopping that train. It will get harder to tell what’s real and what’s not. But for now, there’s still a noticeable gap and as someone who lives in the edit bay, that gap stands out.”

Kelly actually agrees with that, to an extent. He said nothing can replace the collaborative experience of working on non-AI productions, which he still does, and he supports the efforts of Hollywood labor unions to keep AI out of the feature film industry.

“A robot or something that’s been made by AI is not going to make you feel any depth of loss or anything like that,” he said.

He also doesn’t approve of big corporations using AI for their ads. He recalled the public blowback that came in response to an AI-generated Coca-Cola commercial last year and said the criticism was deserved.

“I think, when you have a budget that is that on that level, you know, you should flex your your muscles with an actual production,” he said. 

But Kelly just thinks local businesses should be granted a bit more leeway.

“If we’re managing a whole bunch of clients and [one of them] only has a three- or four-hundred-dollar budget to do an ad, I can create something with that, easily,” he said, referring specifically to the AI tools he subscribes to. 

Does he worry about taking away people’s jobs?

“No, because the person making those AI ads and editing them is me,” he said, adding that he still hires people to work on other ads.

Nor does he buy the idea that AI stifles human imagination. Quite the opposite, in fact. 

“What set me on to [AI] was that as I’m always thinking of crazy ideas: ‘If I had a million dollars, these are what I would be doing. I’d be breaking out of banks’ and stuff like that,” he said. AI has simply allowed him to make such ideas come to life.

Kelly recently collaborated with the owner of Hunan Chinese Restaurant in Eureka for a longer video that is almost entirely AI-generated. It’s called Wok Master:

In describing the origin of his idea for this video, Kelly touched on one of Grimaldo’s gripes.

“[Real] kitchens don’t look great,” he said. “There’s food everywhere on the pans and stuff, and you’re constantly cleaning that off, and people are moving around. … So, [in order] to not show the un-glorious side of things, we were like, ‘Let’s show a baby using a wok and growing up and coming to the U.S.’”

That latter part of the storyline came from the owner, who moved to Humboldt County roughly 40 years ago, Kelly said.

Still, Kelly doesn’t see the glossy, computerized kitchen footage as inherently dishonest — at least, no more so than advertising has been for decades. The burgers you see in Carl’s Jr. and McDonald’s ads aren’t even real food, he said, and they’re hardly an accurate representation of the actual products. 

“I think people have been raised up on the over-embellishment or the overselling” in advertising, he said. “It’s something that they just don’t care about. If you’re entertaining and you’re making someone laugh, I think that’s what they’re going to remember.”

While Kelly may draw an ethical line between low-budget local ads and big-dollar corporate professionals, the larger advertising industry appears to have no such compunctions. A recent industry report found that, among marketers who spent more than $1 million on digital video ads last year, nearly 90 percent are using or plan to use generative AI in their video ads.

Some of those companies are grappling with the same issues as local professionals. A recent New York Times article on the topic noted, “There are ethical concerns about displacing writers, designers and artists. There are also concerns that the ads could fool viewers into thinking something is real when it is actually fake.”

Some companies, including the digital marketing agency Shuttlerock, do employ captions or logos that disclose when AI is used in an ad.

Asked whether he should be labeling his AI ads, too, Kelly said, “I think it’s obvious right now. But in the future?” He paused to think about it, then said, “That’s a tough one. … But I don’t think it has to be labeled, at least not right now. If it was, like, a president or someone saying a bomb threat or something like that, I feel like it would have to. … But right now it’s so obvious when you come across something that is AI.”

He reiterated that the most important thing is grabbing people’s attention and getting customers to walk through the doors for his clients.

We asked Grimaldo if he’d reject a client who specifically requested AI imagery in their commercial. He said he’s already done just that. 

”It might just be the artist in me, but when something starts replacing actual crew positions—DOPs [directors of photography], animators, VFX artists—it crosses a line I’m not comfortable with,” he said.

But then Grimaldo made an admission:

“I do use AI on the audio side for things like dialogue cleanup, denoising and other tedious tasks,” he said. “To me, that’s a tool, not a replacement. There’s a difference between using tech to enhance the work and using it to skip hiring real people.”

Regardless of where each person draws their ethical line with AI, one thing is clear.

“It won’t go away,” Kelly said. “There will be people who hate it and there’s gonna be people who love it. But I think you have to be able to craft something with it.”

He argued that, while anybody can now type in some text or upload a photo and ask AI to generate imagery, the art of filmmaking — even on the local commercial level — still requires certain human skills like editing and storytelling to be successful. 

“I think if you do something with it and actually create something that’s funny then, you know, that’s good,” Kelly said. “And if it helps the business, that’s obviously what matters the most.”