If you think AI as the whole discipline, there are very useful applications indeed, generally in pattern recognition and regulation space. I'm aware a lot of small projects which rely on AI to monitor ecosystems, systems or used as nice regulatory mechanisms. Also, same systems can be used for genuine security applications (civilian, non-lethal, legal and ethical).

If we are talking generative AI, again from my experience, things get a bit blurry. You can use smaller models to dig data you own.

I personally used LLMs, twice up to this day. In each case it was after very long research sessions without any answers. In one, it gave me exactly one reference, and I followed that reference and learnt what I was looking for. In the second case, it gave me a couple of pointers, which I'm going to follow myself again.

So, generative AI is not that useful for me, uses way too much resources, and industry leading models are well, unethical to begin with.