It's more likely a perverse incentive problem. Voice activated "assistants" weren't viewed as assistance for end users. They were universally viewed as one of two things: A way of treating the consumer as a product, or a feature check-box.

That Siri went from useful to far less useful had more to do with the aim to push products at you rather than actually accomplishing the task you set for Siri. If Apple actually delivers an assistant that works locally, doesn't make me the product, and generally makes it easier to accomplish my tasks, then that's a product worth paying for.

When anyone asks "who benefits from 'AI'?" the answer is almost invariably "the people running the AI." Microsoft and OpenAI get more user data, and subscriptions. Google gets another vehicle for attention-injection. But if I run Vicuna or Alpaca (or some eventual equivalent) on my hardware, I can ensure I get what I need, and that there's much less hijacking of my intentions.

So Microsoft, if you're listening: I don't want Bing Chat search, I want Cortana Local.