Most of AI usage could be easily (with a little bit of effort) replaced by just searching for the info you need, but those days search results are so poor that asking AI gets so advantageous for the average user (that don’t care / don’t know about privacy and other costs and risks that come with it)
Do you think they did it on purpose?
They first did it so you spent longer scrolling to see more ads/sponsored results so they could sell those slots at a higher valuation. Same reason why recipes online have you scroll through the entire life story of a suburban mom before getting to the recipe.
I think it’s just a happy coincidence but it’s definitely continuing to worsen.
Set up your SearXNG instances everybody.