In the past we would just get a canned response. Is that actually better than an AI response I wonder?

Yes. The canned responses, for the most part, were not pretending to be human. They were obviously templates or wholesale copy pastes.

I am far less annoyed by AI responses where I am told up front they are AI.

I think the canned response is more honest, because it's usually trivial to tell that it's canned. Maybe if the AI generated response said it was AI generated it would feel less shitty.