Many people have stopped believing this lie. Yes AI has gotten better by some metric which AI companies are pushing. It has not gotten good enough to be a qualified teacher, and it never will.
I suspect it is the last one. This is a trillion dollar industry and if the AI companies claim this, then they should be able to to show it with quality research, they however have not, and the reason is that this is a lie. AI is not better then anything for self-learning. Go to the library and check out a chess book, go to r/trumpet, join a weekly meetup to practice you Spanish, etc. etc. all of these are vastly superior then AI.
You claim self-learning via is hustle free, perhaps you are right, however I suspect that there is no such thing as hustle free learning. If you want to learn something you have to use your brain, and you have to struggle. AI will just act like you got this, flatter you for a minute, and in the worst cases, you may start to believe the AI when it lies to you about how much you’ve learned.
That last part I actually know from experience. A couple of months ago I tried to use Qwen AI to help me study Japanese for exactly one week, my prompt specifically asked to link to sources with every grammar explanation. I know very well how to find grammar explanations using traditional search engines, it is rather easy actually. However Qwen AI would hallucinate non-existing links 3 times out of every 4. After 2 days I removed it from the prompt it was so useless, and it still kept hallucinating links to non-existing resources.
If you want to go beyond and read outside the material using a library or a search engine is much much much better for your learning. If you want to have a discussion, try web forums, discord servers, join a group class, hire an tutor on e.g. italki etc. etc. Pick anything at random which we have been doing for decades and is a proven solution, it will be better for your learning than using AI.
For myself though, I have found a friend who will be helping me learn a new language this summer. I will of course use his help and sources and AI to supplement my learning. I don't just tell AI to teach stuff I use it as intended, as a tool.
At this point it's just PEBKAC. You're holding it wrong brother.
The value of all of these self-learning routes has increased enormously due to existence of AI assistants. At least the way I do it now, I get the initial structure for a subject from YouTube/Udemy/textbooks and then fill out my personal comprehension gaps with the help of AI. You can even point AI to a specific material you're trying to grasp and usually it will rephrase a point you failed to get in a simpler language.
Previously, you'd need some trained person to explain to you something that led you to hit a roadblock. Now, the level of understanding you get easily beats most of the tutors in public schools or community colleges.
This is a lie and most of us know it. AI companies have been lying and lying and lying and lying. If you believe this then the AI companies have successfully lied to you and are making you pay money for an inferior product. If this weren’t a lie then the AI companies should have the research to prove it, they have not, because it is not true. AI does not help anybody learn anything better then using traditional methods.