It’s supposed to be subtle. Or at least, more subtle than whatever that is

Exactly. This reads like someone decided PR firms don't know what they're doing and decided to handle it themselves.

But... it turns out that professional people and consulting companies who have years of experience in a subject area might have something to offer. Who knew?!

Formerly known as the propaganda department. I'm not kidding, that is what these departments used to be called.

Not to that extent though. For OpenAI the PR investment is disproportionate.

Regular companies have people that talk to the media or maybe run some ads. OpenAI is trying to have in-house media.

For a frontier lab it’s striking just how much energy (and dough) goes into this.

You’re right of course that PR exists elsewhere, but that obviously true assertion misses the finer details of how PR works at OpenAI. In doing so it functions as a thought-terminating cliché.