I'm with you. I feel like I'm losing my mind. Everyone around me is talking about the looming AGI, death of the knowledge worker and how "everything" has changed. But every time I try to use these text generators I get nothing useful from them. It's like the whole world has bought into a mass hallucination.
It makes more sense when you realize that while sure, there might be slight variation in output, generally speaking the people tripping over themselves in how [current version] is so amazing aren't being totally honest about why they think it's amazing.
For them, the ability to generate so much trash is the good part. They might not even be fully aware that it's trash, but their general goal is to output more trash because trash is profitable.
It's like all those "productivity systems". Not a single one will produce a noticeable increase in productivity magically that you can't get from just a $1 notebook, they just make you feel like you are being more productive. Same with RP bots or AI text editors. It makes you feel so much faster, and for a lot of people that's enough so they want in on a slice of the AI moneypit!
Its a tool, like any other tool a software developer would use. In areas where I have a lot of repetition or need to pour through verbose (but simple) documentation, its such a game changer. I can spend 5 minutes thinking about what I want the machine to do, give it some samples of what I expect the output to be and wala, it generates it, often times 100% correct if I've got the prompt put in properly, sometimes its good enough with a bit of refinement. This is something I would normally have delegated to a junior team member or sub-contractor, but now I'm saving in time and money.
Occasionally I sink 1-2 hours into a tweaking something I thought was 90% correct but was in reality garbage. I had that happen a lot more with earlier models, but its becoming increasingly rare. Perhaps I'm recognizing the limitations of the tool, or the systems indeed are getting better.
This is all anecdotal, but I'm shipping and building faster than I was previously and its definitely not all trash.