Didn't that guy who thought Google's bot was alive also have some sort of romantic affair with it?

Seriously, the easier explanation is that a lot of software reaches a sort of sweet spot of functionality and then goes downhill the more plumbers get in and start banging on pipes or adding new appliances. Look at all of Adobe's software which has gotten consistently worse in every imaginable dimension at every update since they switched to a subscription model.

Generative "AI" has gone from hard math to engineering to marketing in record time, even faster than crypto did. So I suspect what we have here is more of a classic bozo explosion than multiple corporate cabals intentionally sweeping their own products under the rug.