First thing is that the market is pretty young. Imagine you are now using IBM mainframe PC to run chatgpt and not even windows1.0 on your IBM pc.
There are small AI models. Small agentic capable AI models that can do tool calling. GenAI and what you described. One thing is some solutions are mathematically impossible to gain certain quality. Other thing is they're just not owned by billionaires and not used by corporations so press don't cover them and nobody cares except few enthusiasts and people that need such capabilities and know limitations. Press only covers what they're paid for or what can gain some traction.
The hate on AI as you described doesn't help AI as a science domain. It's not really related to science but related to ineffective spending of money by billionaires.

Town ? So people are fine right ?