It seems like AI companies have grown skeptical too. The recent spate of browser releases and OpenAI launching a social network suggests to me that they’ve hit a dead end for now and are falling back on tried and true methods of monetizing.
It has always been. The longer Google can keep you on Google.com the more ads they can serve you.
Well I'm sure Google will be just fine as they've been in the ad business for quite some time but all these hundreds (thousands?) of also-AI companies won't fare very well when they pivot to the selling eyeballs business.