I say this as someone in big tech, AI is pushed because it's an easy lie to keep big companies viewed as innovating to shareholders. I say this knowing that Google, Microsoft, Apple, and Amazon have contributed significantly to AI research in the last few years alongside the obvious contributions of OpenAI - the goal isn't groundbreaking AI work, but to act as a smoke-screen to show that nothing else has been delivered.

Google has lost ground in advertising, and is losing customers on many of their services. Amazon is losing ground in cloud computing and in retail. Apple has stagnated with recent poor releases. Microsoft has made ground in cloud, but has struggled in advertising, Xbox, Office, and Windows. They use GenAI to keep their stock price high, otherwise they'd drop like a sack of shit because shareholders would say "what the fuck have you even done in the last half a decade?"