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It reduces anaphora ambiguity. Compared with gendered pronouns in English (some languages have gender neutral pronouns).

Bob and Alice went to the beach, but only he got a nasty sunburn.

Bob and Alice went to the beach, but only "it" got a nasty sunburn.

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While it could resolve ambiguities when discussing two objects that happen to have different grammatical genders, it seems it would introduce more anaphoric ambiguities when discussing a person and object with the same gender.

For example:

"George a laissé tomber le livre et son dos était cassé."

Which back was broken here, George's or the books?

No genuine ambiguity here, it's the book (and I suspect that's typical). Even if you increased the ratio of theoretically ambiguous sentences, if that comes at a decrease of actual, practical ambiguity (uintended and unnoticed by the speaker) that's a win.

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