And that was fine, since the algorithms being much dumber then, never made laymen think "this is intelligent in a human-like way". Plus few cared for AI or AI products per se for the most part.

Now that AI is a household term, and that has human-like output and discussion capabilities, and used by laymen for anything, from diet advice to psychotherapy, the connotation is more damaging since people understand LLMs being AI as having human agency and understanding of the world.