> I can only imagine this has something to do with their increasing reliance on AI, and the fact that the AI is probably incentivized to give a correct response to as many people'above the fold' as is possible. If 95% of people are served by dropping the specifically-chosen search term, then the AI probably thinks it's doing a great job.

There has to be an additional reason though, otherwise they could've just put the AI "enhanced" above the fold, and append the actual accurate results below it, for the people doing research.