Honestly, I think the problem is less “AI is useless for making money” and more that “how can I make money online?” is probably one of the worst prompts you can give it.
If you ask for generic opportunities, you're basically going to get the same recycled list: freelancing, affiliate marketing, dropshipping, digital products, etc.
Where I’ve found AI more useful is after you’ve already found a specific opportunity. Give it the business model, target market, constraints, competitors, recent examples, and ask it to tear the idea apart rather than generate ideas from scratch.
It still won’t replace actually digging through communities, marketplaces, YouTube, etc. for fresh signals, though. That’s where the “recent data” problem you mentioned is pretty real.