It's closer to whataboutism than a valid criticism. In this particular case doesn't address at all whether AI generated content should be downranked in search results (probably should since it is mostly low quality clickbait, the same way human generated listicle trash is also low quality clickbait).
Using AI generally isn’t a problem for google. I don’t care if they use it to sort my calendar. The dilemma here is that they use AI to create and put their own auto generated content above search results.
Like all those countless examples where someone got a picture of a criminal mashed up with their own Wikipedia page because they happen to have the same family name. [1] Disregarding the shame factor of this, it’s showcasing low quality auto generated content created only to put the google name above others in search results.
Same applies to those auto generated opening hours of restaurants etc, which are incorrect all of the time. Again low quality ai content put above others and bypassing page rank.
The fact that Google uses AI is irrelevant.