I read it less as a strategic pivot and more as a moment of: "Oh, shit, we gotta make money, don't we?"
AI is too expensive to just run forever and figure that some future investment round will get the monetization right. We're a few years deep into burning cash to make AI happen, and while the models are improving, the overall societal desire for AI is not. Coders like it, business leaders like it... and that is about it.
They see the end of their road ahead if they keep playing around instead of showing value. So this is cutting corners and monetizing the traffic, just like all past web trends.
