One difference is that the early internet was heavily composed of enthusiastic individuals. AI is almost entirely corporate and money-focused.
Even most hobby AI projects mostly seem to have an eye on being a side hustle or CV buffing.
Perhaps it's because even in the 90s you could serve a website for basically free (once you had the server). AI today has a noticeable per-user cost.
> AI is almost entirely corporate and money-focused.
This is untrue. There's a huge landscape of locally-hosted AI stuff, and they're actually doing real interesting research. The problem is that 99% of it is pornography-focused, so understandably it's very underground.