Snark aside what is the point?
Unlike many here I am not automatically negative about any AI project but on this one I'm left scratching my head. If I understand it right, people are putting huge amounts of resources into platforms whose entire purpose is to generate text that is banal but not immediately computer-generated?
There must be a useful point to this because they wouldn't do it otherwise, but this just seems like a glorified chat-bot - fun academically but not in the same realm as IBM's Watson or other AI projects which can actually retrieve or even generate useful information.
Are there details I've missed or some application to this, or is it "just" an academic curiosity?