At the heart of this is the irresponsible marketing, by companies and acolytes, of these tools as some kind of superintelligence imbued with insights and feelin

At the heart of this is the irresponsible marketing, by companies and acolytes, of these tools as some kind of superintelligence imbued with insights and feelings rather than the dumb pattern matching chatbots they are. This is what's responsible for giving laypeople the false impression that they're talking to a quasi-person (of superhuman intelligence at that).