That of allowing people to generate, synthesize, and transform all major modalities of media, from text, to audio and video, for peanuts, instantly.

They create immense economic value and increase productivity.

It's deniable right now. Future looks bright for them, but impact _now_ is more smoke than actual effect.

On top of that, they face massive lawsuits for violating existing IP etc. It's far from a proven business model indeed (heck, OpenAI isn't even profitable yet), and even further as a technology (because it is so inherently unreliable - no matter the model size).

So atm they just sell hype, and not much more.