I feel this is a result of the "make the world a better place" narrative that Silicon Valley companies used to adorn themselves with.

If you just want to play with cool tech and make money, but for marketing reasons, you need to show some ostensible real-world reason why this tech should be developed, then "well, our chatbot could help lonely people with their relationship issues or give people in an abusive relationship a covert channel for help" is probably what comes to mind...

Runners up: Our AI startup will help the poor children in Africa and/or combat climate change (ignore the gas turbines, please).