I really never saw the value proposition with crypto, besides it being digital cash.

A key difference is that generative AI actually can and already does produce value as a means of production. Tons of folks use chatGPT to save hours on their workflows; I'm a programmer and it's probably saved me days of work, and I'm far from an edge case. Imo, the most telling thing is that a lot of the major AI companies are begging Congress to pull the ladder up behind them so that you can only develop AI if your market cap is at least this high; I think some of them are worried that decentralized, FOSS AIs will seriously erode their value propositions, and I think that their suspicions are correct.