Historically, whenever there was an inflection point for a new technology, you'd have lots of people working on the same problem, and whoever cracks the problem first is put of pedestal. Revisionist history is built around that one person asserting that if it weren't for them, that said technology would never have materialized.
We're just seeing a variation of that playing out live. There are multiple teams working on AI, ChatGPT got "there" first and now we have a single heroic figure to worship. Personality cults seem to be a part of the quintessential human condition.