it's usually a "something is better than nothing" situation.

If you have somebody willing to write custom release messages, that's definitely better; but conventional commits is better than nothing for it.

Absolutely not. Commit messages should never be automatically passed through to the end-customer. I also worked in a place that tried it once and it was a disaster. Sure, a list of commit messages can be a useful start as a list of things that might want to be put in the release notes, but very rarely is the developer the right person to be explaining those changes to the end user.

If a developer is being asked to do that, it's a good sign that the PM isn't doing their job properly.

They did not say generated release notes are useful if you care so little you would write no release notes without them however.

That's right, but with AI help + some hallucination you can get nice looking release notes out of the worst mess of commits.

You can have a writer re-write them into acceptable release notes. It gives them a good and accurate starting point.

Closed issues are a better starting point in my experience.