Utilizing the otherwise quiet month of August gives Google a chance to show off new AI ideas on Pixel ahead of Apple’s next iPhones which, now, look to be packed with “Apple Intelligence.”
It's something similar like the dotcom crash where everyone and their mother is looking to capitalize on The Next Big Thing™ which will then crash spectacularly but will leave a host of survivors that'll be the next big companies.
Writing it off as a fad is rather ignorant. Sure there’s a lot of hype and bullshit surrounding AI, but it already has strong use cases and earns a profit for the companies involved. It’s still the early years for the tech too, so it is reasonable to expect it to improve in the coming years, both in terms of accuracy and performance.