I don't think their layoffs have anything to do with this old school machine learning being called AI. It's only profitable use is the weaponized manipulation of the public at large, which we've had a front row view of over the last 8 years.

Most US tech companies have been floundering to do anything useful for decades and then made terrible and large investments during Covid. Now that the world economy has tanked massively, World War 3 is slowly spinning up and the world economy is slowly decaying into food shortages and famine. I don't think tech companies who spent the last 20 years profiting by spying on their users and selling the data to law enforcement, governments, and political campaigns, will be a very important part of the world which is hunkering down into survival mode. I believe the layoffs wholly flow from this.