LLMs are known to be compute/energy hungry to execute. It is a developing technology, if not downright experimental.
Therefore, this explanation is very likely. I cannot see the reason to call this a conspiracy.
It would make more sense if that was internal and the responses were then graded.
A failed canary release would be more likely, where they released this version to a small amount of people not realising it was bad
You can simply deploy different versions and compare the neutral + positive / negative feeback ratio.
It would be sinful if they did not add other metrics like how many times the user had to correct and update their prompt before ending the chat, etc.
Data, data, data...