AI hype isn't so much about technology; it's a way of communicating within the oligopoly that they intend to drop product quality in concert.
It's the same as how they used to collaborate to keep prices artificially high-- only now consumers have no money left, they're chasing a profit margin by reducing production costs and therefore product quality. The stuff AI produces is objectively bad and unmaintainable, and it's not that businesses don't see that, it's more that they've decided that producing this level of output is a good business strategy.
Consumer choice has been an illusion for a long time. We can't take our money elsewhere because everywhere we might go is in on the conspiracy. (By which I simply mean "people conspiring". This isn't a conspiracy of dark smoke-filled rooms, but a bland one of coded language and tacit agreements). And this swing was happening well before AI became its favoured tool-- when was the last time you bought a piece of technology that Just Worked?
AI is terrible in its own terms, yes. But it would have been just a stupid novelty had it not happened to coincide with the spiraling end stage of capitalism.