the answer to "why are these companies going so rawdog into the AI fad despite it having very, very limited applicability to the average person's day-to-day life" is that these are tech businesses approaching the border of becoming irrelevant through the march of time due to having no new creative ideas beyond copying what the leader is doing and hoping it doesn't die on the vine before it hits the market
the biggest tech companies are typically run by people who might have some engineering acumen or MBA majors, but are otherwise complete dullards who are easily hoodwinked by any grifter armed with a circus-load of smoke and mirrors. they're desperate to be at the forefront of burgeoning tech fads because investors are sheep who need some kind of stimuli or else they start getting jumpy at the first sign of danger (aka the number not going up as fast)
they've spent healthcare systems worth of money on this thing in one simultaneous bid to be king of a sandcastle on a beach in high tide. this might rival the 2008 recession as far as big moneyed interests putting all their eggs in one flimsy basket and then begging the government to bail them out again
a sandwich maker at the deli or a janitor at a public school bring more societal value than all of these speculator fuckwits combined. total parasite class playing shell games with a staggering chunk of the country's finances