No, even a forgetful and repetitive sycophant meets a lot of genuine unmet needs for lonely people.

Many such people feel alienated, ostracized, stigmatized, ashamed, or rejected and something that says nice (or dirty) things to them, on demand, and in decent natural language can scratch a desperate itch.

That's not to say anything about the social good or ill that may come from it. But the hype is sound. It's one of the few "sure thing" products we can see right now.