If I genuinely believed I was 18 months away from superintelligence that could solve cancer, I would probably not be pivoting to horny chatbots, but that's just me (a person with priorities)
If AI were 18 months away from solving cancer, the ones investing humongous quantities of money in it wouldn't be the big tech companies, it would be the big pharma. Which I'm pretty sure are investing on it, but not nearly as much. And it is a pie in the sky that will take at least two years to yield benefits. The number of clients would be the number of cancer patients. That's a lot of people, but fortunately not so much people.
A horny chatbox mean lots of paying clients, paying now.
Which is exactly what a company that has wasted the hugest quantity of money ever burned on a pipe dream and have investors getting impatient needs.