Basically FOMO, and keeping shareholders happy.

We have OKRs for using AI, yet no dev tooling allowed without customer permission in projects delivery.

So you have this ridiculous situation where the only tool devs are allowed to use is CoPilot 365, and pasting/saving code, for those that care about their OKRs.

Same reason random companies shipped Web 3.0 and NFTs. They were hoping to make money off it. They're now hoping if they sprinkle some AI pixie dust it will make money. If they're smart they can grab a couple million off the AI bandwagon before it goes bust. Either way they need to keep up with the joneses.

Companies shipped the Semantic Web? When?

Web3, not 3.0 (I didn't realize they both use the same name). As late as last year I got a recruiter asking if I wanted to work for a Real Estate startup that was gonna use Web3 and Blockchain Technology to "revolutionize the housing market".

To attract more investment, because it's the hottest trend. They don't care if it actually works and profits.

Microsoft wants to lock you as soon as possible in their ecosystem for AI-usage?

If they can get the many GH enterprise users to use copilot on their repos, then for Microsoft the future is merely about optimizing their margins while the technology keeps getting better.

After investing a lot of money, bean counters can make things look better on paper if they can say "you see, everyone is using it". Others want to benefit from users actually training their AI. So they'll feed you all kind of party slogans, but they rarely are real motivations.

Like others have said to justify their spending/make shareholders happy. its exactly like why is web search a part of windows search feature ? The answer is simple: gotta make Bing look good to shareholders

Microsoft only forces things, it's not a surprise at this point.

Can't make a bubble without generating a lot of froth.

CEO tells CTO to allocate budget towards increasing productivity with AI and this is the asnwer, it's easy to enable and not that expensive to trial

To grow revenue. If it’s an option, it is less likely to be bought versus including it and increasing prices to get towards growth goals.

Tech wants the growth, companies consuming this want to be able to do more with less people. The result is the current experience.

(TLDR line go up)

They have invested huge amounts in the AI bubble which they have to justify to shareholders and / or investors. The easiest way to do this is to integrate it into existing products which already exists so they can claim millions of daily active users.

Same reason Google has added AI summary to their most used product: search.

My problem isn't that the AI is stock feature, it's that it's poorly bolted-on UX everywhere as popups/overlays etc that have to be dismissed to see/continue what I'm in the middle of doing. It's like getting a GDPR popover, not the first time you visit a new site, but every time you're doing a routine task.