Humans are fundamentally irrational. Not devoid of rationality, but not limited by it. Many social phenomena are downstream from that fact.

Humans have fashions. If something is considered cool, many people start doing that thing, because it automatically gives them a bit of appreciation from most other people. It is often rational to follow a fashion and reap the social benefits it brings.

People are bad at estimating probabilities. They heavily discount the future, and want everything now, hence FOMO. At the same time, they tend to believe in glowing future prospects uncritically, because it helps build social cohesion and power structures.

This is why fads periodically flush all over our industry, and our society, and the whole civilization. And again, it becomes rational to follow the trend and ride the wave. Say the magic word (OOP, XML, Agile, Social, Mobile, Cloud, SaaS, ML, more to come), and it becomes easier to get a job, press coverage, conference invites, investments.

Then the bubble deflates, the useful parts remain (often quite a bit), the fascination, hype, attention, and FOMO find a new worthy object.

So companies add "AI features" partly because it's cool (news coverage, promotions), partly because of the FOMO (uncertainty is high, but what if we'd be missing a billion-dollar opportunity?), partly because of social cohesion (following fashion is natural, being a contrarian may be respectable, but looking ignorant is unacceptable). It's not about carefully calculated material returns on a a carefully measured investment. It may look inane, but it's not always stupidity, much like sacrificing some far-future perspectives in exchange of stock growing this quarter is not about stupidity.