Washers now do have useful control systems. Mine starts out by spinning the tub a little, before adding water, to measure the load. Out of balance problems are a thing of the past - that's sensed and dealt with automatically. It's able to handle bed comforters or sneakers without problems. But it's not "AI", and it doesn't have a network connection.

Literally, “simulated intelligence” at best.

But for marketing, “artificial intelligence” is fine. And better than LLMs being called “AI”

Surprising that there are still people who don't think LLMs qualify as AI

I think in some people's minds, the concept of sentience and intelligence are intertwined, and there are at least some people (myself included) who do not think they're the same. There is a strong (but surprisingly not universal) consensus that LLMs are not sentient, so if you insist that sentience/intelligence are the same thing, then LLMs don't qualify as AI either. If you think the two concepts are separable, then they're intelligent but not sentient. The devil is of course in the definitions.