I suspect the work you're talking about could be easily handled by an intern working with Core ML and a MacBook.
The landscape is varied. There are companies doing real actual big leading edge stuff, there are companies where ML is sprinkled onto projects as a buzzword but no real interesting work happens, and companies that just need a practical small solution like the ones you mentioned, and could get by with Core ML, but don't because they hire a PhD who isn't aware of Core ML.
There's a vast amount of work that doesn't involve unethical recommendation systems.
Expand your horizon outside the Bay Area.
The plurality of work I see is straightforward computer vision/NLP applications.