The term AI doesn't mean a whole lot to many people. I can casually mention that the image above didn't exist and I created it by typing something like this into a prompt line: Create an image of a 1920's, Italian hotel near the edge of a cliff. But generative AI is more than pretty pictures.
Already today, you can have a conversation with a device that's smarter than any real person on earth. AI is a big, black box. If trained on enough data, a chat AI can learn new skills without specifically being programmed. If the data set is large enough, certain skills seem to appear because of the logic gained in language manipulation. Now, of course, they're more than language. I created an 8-second video clip by typing, a hamster surfing.
People just don't understand the power that lies at their fingertips. I have a dear friend who is taking post-graduation courses at UBC. I tried to show him that he needn't use AI to ask questions using the generic, basic configuration. If someone adds a few sentences to set up the AI, it can be from any time period. If you provide a character, it will take on the role. It's a logic machine with access to the whole Internet. Don't simply think it's easier way of doing a Google search.