There are plenty of AI companies solving interesting problems and possibly worth it. But most problems are more simple than that and that hasn't changed.
Without it being attached to the AI hype, it surely is. In the current tech landscape, there’s a tendency to stuff AI into everything, so anything that doesn’t include it ends up being left behind.
It's funny how when I talk to ML practitioners who have experience & work in the field they're the most pragmatic voices, like our staff developer on the ML team: "if you can solve the problem algorithmically you should definitely do that!"