Some people don’t like when it’s too quiet. For some it’s uneasy, for some it makes it too hard to stop your mind from wandering. That can make it hard to sleep or hard to focus on a task. White noise is noise that makes it not quiet, but isn’t so loud or too full of meaning to be a distraction on its own. Most people use something like ocean waves, running water, rain, wind noises, the warp core noise from Star Trek, etc.
AI models that can perform well without sending everything off to the cloud to do so are going to be high on my wish list. Partly for privacy, partly for responsiveness, partly for resilience when the internet goes down. I’ve heard some rumors that this is a focus for the AI that will drive the next upgrade to Siri, and I hope that turns out to be true.