Claiming people want this is like claiming that people wanted WW2 because look we're all enjoying the tech that was developed during it!
Though I do agree that most people probably don't want as much AI as is being shoved on us right now, there is a subset that do want at least some of it.
More my point, yeah I think there is an issue of the actual demand being extremely over estimated due to shady practices (like of course Gemini gets a lot of use when every single google search calls it whether you want it or not). But we also should not be so quick to disregard there being real demand just to hope for the outcome we want.
I talk to my Uber driver whenever I'm visiting somewhere, and yes, some of them are actually excited about AI.