That's probably what they're trying to say on the surface. I'm a bit less charitable and can't help but feel that there's also a saltiness factor that somebody

That's probably what they're trying to say on the surface. I'm a bit less charitable and can't help but feel that there's also a saltiness factor that somebody else got all the attention -- but, even to your point, "other companies also have this capability today and that transformers have been more of an evolutionary process than a revolutionary process" - we probably should ask why game changing research like this has been placed under the veil of secrecy and kept hidden from the public for so long. It seems like AI researchers have a collective tendency to invent reasons to hide the latest advances from the public. Then when ChatGPT is released publicly, of course the public is astounded by its capabilities. I can't help recalling the incident where Blake Lemoine claimed Google's LaMDA was sentient. I don't necessarily agree with his claims, but people were generally quicker to dismiss his claims as nonsense than I expected. It is quite clear that no matter whether the sentient claims were valid, Google did have an AI that's on par with ChatGPT today. That should have been news itself, but all I recall seeing was experts shooting down (aka "debunking") Lemoine without recognizing that there was something more to the story. FWIW I don't think ChatGPT as-is is sentient (if only because OpenAI probably tweaked it until it couldn't talk about itself), but this technology is still hugely impactful. Maybe the AI researchers who thinks ChatGPT is overhyped are just a bit out of touch with the general public after years of having access to private models.