Businesses are incentivized to say it’s because of AI because it makes them look better. So not saying that when actually asked by a government entity is meaningful.
How does firing people resultant of the most disliked and unpopular technology on the planet, and avoiding marking it off on an obvious entry-point into regulatory burden "make them look better"?
Anecdotally, we (humans) appear to be more accepting and less critical of companies giving AI-related layoff excuses, vs. perhaps telling a more truthful story like "we are losing money and are scrambling to reach profitability" or "we'd like to make the stock price go up."
Though I do agree there are a vocal group of people that are loudly outspoken about AI. I would guess that those people are a minority of the total population though, and tend to skew either techy or geographically local to areas hardest hit by data center build-out.