Why can many different AI products (e.g., a writing tool, a customer service bot, a code assistant) feel similar in capability?
AI models can only do one type of task well
They may all be using the same underlying foundation model via API
They all copy ChatGPT's training data
Foundation models are open-source and freely copyable
Explanation
Many AI products are application-layer wrappers around one or a few foundation models accessed via API. Multiple competing products can use the same base model (e.g., GPT-5 or Claude) while differentiating only on UX and workflow.