If the energy efficiency of things like Face ID was indeed so far so bad that you need a more efficient M3 Ultra, how come Face ID was integrated into smartphones years ago, apparently without significant negative impact on battery life?
Image recognition, OCR, AR and more are applications of the NPU that didn’t exist at all on older iPhones because they have would be too intensive for the chips and batteries.
You're confusing this with what features/enhancements new generations of NPUs bring, which nobody else was talking about. Everyone else in the conversation is comparing pre- and post-NPU.