It's common knowledge among LLM experts that the current capabilities of LLMs are triggered as emergent properties of training transformers on reams and reams of data.

That is intent of scale. To trigger LLMs to reach this point of "emergence". Whether or not it's AGI is a debate I'm not willing to entertain but everyone pretty much agrees that there's a point where the scale flips from a transformer being an autocomplete machine to something more than that.

That is legal basis for why companies would go for scale with LLMs. It's the same reason why people are allowed to own knives even though knives are known to be useful for murder (as a side effect).

So technically speaking these companies have legal runway in terms of intent. Making an emergent and helpful AI assistant is not illegal, but also making a profit isn't illegal either.