Automated vending machines have been a thing since their inception, definitionally.

Vending machines run by an LLM have not been a thing until recently.

Vending machines are static experiences. They sit there and wait until told to give an item and paid for it. Why would you need an LLM for that? There’s nothing to solve there

The comment is a reference to a well known benchmark in which LLMs inevitably lose money attempting to run a simple simulated vending machine business.

You know those puff pieces are to assuage our fears of job loss and provide an folksy aww-sucks patina to the plucky LLM who can't run a vending machine.

Or maybe that LLMs just aren't that good.