Yeah, that's right, it's a tool. The tools that are collectively referred to as "AI" are useful and can be used to create some very magical illusions and even achieve some practical goals but so can a water pump or a tank of compressed air. We don't pretend that a water pump is a living creature despite the fact that it can produce effects that mimic the human heart.

I was walking in the hills one day and I kept thinking I was hearing some wild animal hissing at me and it was freaking me out. But after a while, I realized it was a water pipe along the side of the road that had been punctured in places which were making the hissing noises. It's easy to fool people into thinking that inanimate tools are alive because our imaginations are quite active and we're easily misled into thinking that there is an "intelligence" behind phenomena which are strictly mechanical. This is doubly true when someone is trying to convince you that what you're seeing is the result of magic.

This is often discussed in the literature of the colonial era. It was not uncommon for European colonists to terrorize the people with gimmicks designed to trick the local inhabitants into believing they had super powers using simple steam engines, winches, pulleys and other mechanical devices or chemical tricks like fireworks to create magic demons that only they could control. The character Kurtz, in Conrad's Heart of Darkness was one example but there are many instances describing this practice repeated over and over because it was a common ploy centuries ago that is too tempting to let go of. Tell the gullible, naive onlookers that you possess magical powers and they will bow down. The tech aristocracy is trying to use this same strategy to keep the peasants invested in their magical AI powers in a time when they know quite clearly that the well is running dry.